The law on the restoration of nature passes, but its application dead-ends remain

Belgium | Regulations

According to Copa and Cogeca, the lack of clear and consistent funding for ecosystem restoration across the EU remains unanswered partly explaining the great embarrassment and headlong rush that surrounds this law.

6/18/2024

Growing grass.

This Monday, the Environment Council voted to approve the Nature Restoration Law (NRL), with the slimmest majority possible, and one which was defined by the individual voices of ministers and not the positions of national governments! This course, deriving from a flawed proposal, will cause legal battles at regional, national, and European levels, with the future unclear as to how or when this law will be implemented.

According to Copa and Cogeca, from the beginning, this file has been contentious with a full rejection from the European Parliament Committees for Fisheries, Agriculture, and Environment successively; as well as a General Approach position wherein the Presidency country who wrote it, voted to reject.

Political rhetoric aside, the question of the lack of clear and consistent funding for ecosystem restoration across the EU remains unanswered partly explaining the great embarrassment and headlong rush that surrounds this law. In this regard, we missed this morning the only chance to make this text implementable and acceptable on the ground. A second reading could have made this law more realistic!

This comes just weeks after the European elections, in which agriculture played a particular role in the discussion, this will be the first sign to farmers and forest-owners of the intentions of their national governments and the next Commission.

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