The European Commission’s implementing regulation for applying the Nature Restoration Regulation could be reopened, less than a year after its adoption.
At the beginning of April, Mathilde Androuët (PfE, French) submitted a motion for a resolution to the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment—calling into question the format in which national nature restoration plans are implemented.
In her view, the European Commission’s implementing regulation imposes “a rigid and overly prescriptive format for national restoration plans”, which limits “the discretion of Member States to tailor restoration measures to their specific ecological and socio-economic conditions”.
To justify her request, the French MEP cites by turns the common agricultural policy (CAP), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the EU budget. The implementing regulation would adversely affect agricultural productivity, food security, and rural economies as well as European rural agricultural exports’ competitiveness. According to the far-right MEP, it would also violate the EU budget’s “principles of sound financial management and budgetary efficiency”.
The motion for a resolution will be put to a vote when the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment meets on Tuesday, 8 April. The current political momentum—already illustrated by the one-year postponement of the regulation on imported deforestation (see EUROPE 13547/26) and, more recently, with the ‘Omnibus I’ package—suggests that the ‘European Green Deal’ texts have not crossed their final hurdle. See the resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/gaf (Original version in French by Florent Servia)