Twenty-seven ratify ‘to the extreme’ biodiversity law, one of the rules most attacked by the far right | Climate & Environment

The saga of one of the most politicized and instrumentalized European laws in recent years has come to an end: this Monday in Luxembourg, EU environment ministers gave final approval to the Nature Restoration Law (LRN). The rules, which seek to recover the deteriorating European biodiversity as a key element in the fight against global warming, had become the great scapegoat…

The saga of one of the most politicized and instrumentalized European laws in recent years has come to an end: this Monday in Luxembourg, EU environment ministers gave final approval to the Nature Restoration Law (LRN). The rules, which seek to recover the deteriorating European biodiversity as a key element in the fight against global warming, had become the great scapegoat for the strong polarization experienced by the EU, where fear of the advance of the extreme right has led several countries (and the main party in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party, EPP) to back down from their commitments to fight climate change, especially after this year’s agricultural protests.

But it wasn’t just a problem Green: The “jam” of rules, defined by Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius at the beginning of the Environmental Council, was also becoming a serious problem of the “credibility” of the European institutions. Withdrawing an agreement when it had already been negotiated (and approved by the European Parliament) “undermines all the institutional agreements of the Union,” warned the Irish minister Eamon Ryan during the debate. Shortly before, the third vice-president and Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, had also stressed the need to protect institutional processes: “If we don’t like what we have agreed on and we reopen it, we are not trustworthy,” summarized the Spanish Nadal and the Luxembourg appointee. If it had not been approved, “a serious crisis would have opened in relation to the trust on which we must make decisions between the different European institutions,” he said after the final vote, also reminding that the law was an international commitment of the European Union which seeks to take the lead in environmental matters. Greenpeace affirms that not ratifying the law would have been an “embarrassment” for the EU, at a time when preparations are being made for the next UN meeting on biodiversity in Colombia in October.

After final approval by a narrow qualified majority this Monday (55% of Member States must vote in favour and Member States in favour of the proposal must represent at least 65% of the total EU population) and once published in the Official Journal of the European Union, the LRN will begin to be implemented immediately. The rules seek to restore 20% of the EU’s terrestrial and marine areas by 2030, where 81% of terrestrial and aquatic habitats are in degraded condition.

Thus ends, a priori, a legislative test that began when the European People’s Party (EPP), which until then had supported the rules, made a 180-degree turn at the beginning of 2023 and called on the European Parliament to overturn it, something that ultimately did not happen. They achieved it, but at the cost of a lot of political drama – almost as much as the States have done now – and a strong rupture for everyone. The strong conservative turn – with some MEPs and liberal leaders – took place just after the agrarian and populist BBB party won the Dutch provincial elections, giving rise to the first fears of a populist attack on the elections that culminated a year later with a sharp rise in the European Parliament of the far right, which has promised to end the Green Deal and has made the LRN its maximum symbol. Paradoxically, in the Netherlands, the BBB has emerged from the European elections very weakened under the leadership of the green-social democratic coalition of Frans Timmermans, former Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Green Pact until last summer and one of its great promoters. LRN. Nevertheless, the country, which is on the verge of forming a government led by ultra Geert Wilders, voted against the biodiversity law this Monday.

Austria’s decisive vote

As it could not be otherwise in a file that, at times, seemed like a “horror movie”, as Ribera has said, the approval of the LRN was achieved this Monday under the threat of failure until the last moment, and with it the possibility of future consequences, not only legal, but also political, including a government crisis in Austria, where new elections will be held in September and where the far-right party FPÖ received the most votes in the entire country in the European elections last week.

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For the law to go through, it was necessary that at least one state that had said no change its vote to yes; despite having voted in favour at the time, Hungary withdrew, leaving a delicate balance unbalanced. While the Belgian president had already assumed that he would have to delay the vote again due to lack of support, surprisingly, Austria’s environment minister, environmentalist Leonore Gevesler, announced on Sunday that she would vote in favour this Monday, considering herself legally able to support the text due to the change in the balance at the federal level in her country (one state, Vienna, changed from no to yes, breaking the consensus against the law that had tied Gevesler until then).

“In 20 or 30 years, when I show my nieces the beauty of our country and they ask me what I did, I will tell them that I did everything I could to preserve it,” he said upon arriving at the Council, where he confirmed his decision despite threats from conservative members of his own coalition government: Chancellor Karl Nehammer has threatened to file an appeal for annulment before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). A threat – supported by the militants of the FPO – that the Belgian minister who chaired the meeting this Monday, Alain Marron, rejected, considering that those who vote are the ministers who attend the meeting and that this is the legitimate voice to take into account. According to diplomatic sources, the Council’s legal service has also confirmed that the vote made by a minister on behalf of his country is legally binding.

Diplomatic sources agree that the difficulty of securing this vote in favour is a symbol of the many weaknesses the EU has shown lately. Because the negotiation delays that the LRN has caused over the past year, especially in recent months, have become a warning of everything that can (and probably will) go wrong in a new five-year period in which what is right will matter more. The more extreme, the Eurosceptics and climate change deniers, will be in the European Parliament and in many capitals, perhaps even in Paris after the legislative elections on July 7, where Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is very likely to reach the vote for the first time.

It is not only a matter of the green agenda having suffered a strong setback in a few years, in which there is no longer any time left to move forward in the fight against climate change, the problem is also structural: this law has exposed the fragility of the EU negotiation system itself, of the agreements (both written and tacit) that have so far allowed the difficult mechanism of the innumerable European countries to function, everything in common, yes, but with a vision of the past and the future, and how to reach that future, often very different. Many laws of the green agenda have broken all conventions in recent years: the credibility of the States was already declining when negotiating due to the retreat by several governments, which demanded changes to the texts already agreed with Parliament during the ratification process of various environmental regulations, from the ban on the sale of combustion cars from 2035 to the Due Diligence Directive, which requires greater respect for human and environmental rights from large companies.

But with the LRN the pulse has become even more acute, since, despite having already been very low during the negotiations, several States tried to renegotiate it even after it had already been approved by the European Parliament, something unusual at least in recent years.

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