At the Environment Council on Monday 25 March, the environment ministers of the EU Member States reviewed the future of the regulation on nature restoration. Normally, this Council should have been the opportunity for the Member States to ratify the political agreement on this dossier, but the vote finally had to be withdrawn from the ministers’ agenda at the last minute on Friday 22 March, after Hungary changed its mind and opposed the agreement, leaving the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council without a qualified majority (see EUROPE 13377/7).
“I honestly regret this situation. [...] To backtrack now is extremely difficult to swallow”, began the Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevičius – the validation of a political agreement at this stage of the legislative process is, as a rule, a formality.
“This sends out a very negative signal about the credibility of our institutions, especially internationally. This deadlock raises a number of questions about the coherence of the European decision-making process”, he added.
The European Commissioner’s comments were quickly echoed by some Member States, such as Germany, which indicated it was “extremely concerned about the situation”. “We have made commitments to Parliament, which has given the green light. We must also show our agreement”, declared the German Federal Minister for the Environment, Steffi Lemke.
For its part, Hungary briefly justified itself, arguing that “nature protection can be done at national level” and indicating that Budapest’s about-turn was thus due to a question of “subsidiarity”.
“We do not believe that the agreement offers Member States sufficient flexibility. The Council’s mandate was already fragile in June, so we can’t ignore it”, said the Hungarian Environment Minister, Anikó Raisz, even though her country had initially supported the Interinstitutional Agreement.
A number of avenues are on the table to try and achieve a qualified majority among the EU27, including trying to get an undecided Member State on board. In any case, that undecided Member State won’t be Finland, which, along with Belgium, Austria and Poland, is among the abstainers.
“It would be irrational or inconsistent to change our point of view on the same text”, explained the Finnish Minister for the Environment, Kai Mykkänen. From the outset, his country did not support the agreement and estimated, on the basis of a Commission impact assessment, that the costs of implementing the text would have been the highest in Europe for Finland.
Italy, one of the countries opposing the agreement, felt that “further reflection” was needed to avoid “any negative consequences for the agricultural sector”.
Beyond the substance of the regulation on nature restoration itself, several Member States considered that this kind of reversal in the final stages of the process could be detrimental to inter-institutional negotiations of all kinds in the future.
“This seems to be becoming quite common: the rules of procedure and the decision-making process are not being respected. It’s not acceptable to back out at the last minute. We are a community, there are rules, otherwise I don’t see how we can move forward”, said the Spanish Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, whose country held the Presidency of the Council of the EU when the Interinstitutional Agreement was reached.
“How do you think the trilogues will work in future, if we say that we agree with the MEPs, but that we can go back on this agreement? The whole decision-making process is being undermined”, added the Irish Minister for the Environment, Eamon Ryan. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)