EU conservatives fail to kill nature restoration bill — for now

 

EU conservatives fail to kill nature restoration bill — for now

 

A push to reject the new legislation fell short in a key Parliament vote, but EPP lawmakers say they’ll keep fighting against it.

 

BY LOUISE GUILLOT AND EDDY WAX

JUNE 15, 2023 6:33 PM CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-conservatives-fail-to-kill-nature-restoration-bill-for-now/

 

STRASBOURG — Both sides are claiming victory after an existential battle between left- and right-wing coalitions on a key piece of Green Deal legislation in the European Parliament on Thursday. But with EU elections on the horizon, it was a sign that the war has just begun.

 

Days of tension crescendoed when the environment committee began voting on the controversial Nature Restoration Regulation, a proposal that wants to put at least 20 percent of the bloc’s degraded habitats back into a good natural state by 2030.

 

Left-leaning MEPs high-fived, clapped and whooped when the first amendment — a call by the conservative European People’s Party to reject the legislative proposal entirely — narrowly failed to find a majority. The vote was tied, with 44 in favor and 44 against.

 

That result meant that the EPP's push to kill the bill was dismissed, and lawmakers moved on to what turned into a three-hour voting marathon on 2,500 amendments to the bill. They eventually ran out of time, forcing Committee Chair Pascal Canfin to postpone a final vote until the next committee meeting on June 27 — before it faces a vote in the full plenary in July.

 

The knife-edge vote signals it'll be a major challenge to get a majority of MEPs to back the bill.

 

It's also evidence of an informal right-wing coalition — bringing together the European People's Party, right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists, the far-right Identity and Democracy group and some members of the liberal Renew group — emerging in Parliament ahead of next year's European election.

 

Senior EPP politician Pieter Liese described the vote as evidence of a "new equilibrium" of political forces in the Parliament. “This is a changing time now, they will understand that EPP needs to be in the gravity center of the European Parliament,” he said.

 

Socialists and Greens' slammed EPP chief Manfred Weber for electioneering. "Historically the right has always opposed the ecological transition but it has always claimed to like nature, and here it prefers to devastate nature to align with the extreme right rather than bearing its responsibilities,” said Yannick Jadot, a French Green MEP.

 

"The gloves have come off. We’re now in an extremely tense political situation with a lot of electioneering from the EPP," said Lara Wolters, an S&D lawmaker from the Netherlands.

 

No clear winner yet

Attempts to convince and cajole a handful of undecided MEPs to either back or reject the highly controversial legislative proposal — after it was already turned down by the agriculture and fisheries committees — continued up until the very last minute in the meeting room before the vote.

 

To make sure the group line was thoroughly observed, the EPP substituted a third of its regular ENVI members for Thursday’s vote, according to Canfin, who has access to this data as committee chair.

 

Czech EPP lawmaker Stanislav Polčák had initially decided to back the nature restoration bill, arguing that it will be beneficial to the EU’s efforts to fight climate change, but later on backtracked and agreed to be substituted.

 

“The key risk was today and that's why the EPP was so mobilized,” said Canfin, who ahead of the vote accused EPP leader Manfred Weber of “blackmailing” members of his own group, even threatening them with expulsion, if they wouldn’t fall in line. Weber dismissed the accusation, arguing that Canfin was “nervous and panicked” ahead of the vote.

 

Non-attached members reported being pressured by both sides ahead of the tight vote. Ivan Vilibor Sinčić, a non-attached MEP of the Euroskeptic party The Key of Croatia, said in an email that attempts were made to replace him without his consent.

 

Each side is now claiming Thursday's inconclusive results as a win — but the reality is far from settled.

 

The lead MEP on the file, Spanish lawmaker César Luena of the Socialists & Democrats, called the outcome a “first victory for the Nature Restoration Law,” while Canfin said he was “very happy” the right-wing push to kill the controversial text failed.

 

Dutch EPP member Esther de Lange insisted that the tie vote on the conservatives' push to reject the bill shows “there is no majority" in favor of the ENVI Committee's report on the proposed nature rules, and suggested that Canfin was slow-walking through the vote on amendments because he was "dreading the final outcome."

 

“We'll be rallying our forces to continue voting at the next committee meeting,” said French EPP lawmaker Anne Sander, who successfully led the group’s fight to reject the proposal in the Parliament’s agriculture committee a few weeks ago.

 

“I'm an optimist," she added, pointing out that 44 votes "will be enough" to vote against the report in June's committee meeting.

 

All to play for

The coalition against the text led by the EPP will be put to a new test during the final plenary vote, expected to take place on July 10 in Strasbourg.

 

Some members are already signaling they could be convinced to switch sides.

 

Seán Kelly, an Irish EPP lawmaker, said he hasn't decided whether or not he is dead set against the proposal and could be open to being persuaded. “It was 50/50, nobody can say they won,” he said. “TBC is the phrase to use.”

 

“The fact this has been so controversial would indicate that the Commission got something wrong,” Kelly said, but he also criticized his group’s move to walk away from negotiations on the bill last month.

 

The position of EU countries — which are expected to adopt their joint stance on the new nature restoration rules at the Environment Council on June 20 — could also influence the outcome of the upcoming votes in Parliament, according to the defenders of the nature restoration bill.

 

Dutch Greens MEP Bas Eickhout argued that “it’s important that the Council shows where they stand, that can also help us in our concluding votes in two weeks.”

 

“The message that comes out of this ENVI vote is that we want a law,” he said. “We need a bit more time for getting to a common position [but] I think it’s possible