Yesterday in Strasbourg, Copa and Cogeca said it loud and clear: we can work on the restoration of nature, but it will be difficult with the law on the restoration of nature as proposed by the Commission. MEPs gathered in the plenary session in Strasbourg opted, after a disputed vote, to align themselves with the Council’s position and to reject, by a short majority of 12 votes, the full rejection of the proposal. Despite improvements on the agricultural side of the proposal, this law remains fundamentally ill-prepared, lacks a budget, and will remain unimplementable for farmers and forest owners.
The plenary vote in the European Parliament was a key stage in the process of amending this law. After three unsuccessful attempts in committees, MEPs finally decided to go along with the Council’s general approach. A vote that is rare enough to be worth noting, and which already shows the extent to which the European Commission’s approach has been divisive, punitive, and ideological. If there has been a failure present today, on a text that should have been or could have been a compromise, it is that of the Commission.
Today’s vote marks the start of a new sequence on this text, with a trilogue from which little can be expected or hoped for, as it will not fix the fundamental problems with this proposal, starting with its lack of clear funding and feasibility. All in all, there’s little chance that the objectives set out by the Commission will be achieved as hoped. There will be no winners with this initiative, but many losers in our rural areas, starting with the smallest and most fragile economic structures. That’s why all Copa and Cogeca member organisations will remain vigilant around the negotiations in trilogue over the upcoming months, making sure that subsidiarity is respected.
Artigo publicado originalmente em Copa Cogeca.
