Ribera considers it “irresponsible” to allow the first major law to recover the EU's biodiversity to fail

The Spanish Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, warned this Monday in Brussels of the “enormous irresponsibility” that would result from member states failing the Nature Restoration Law (LRN) in its final stage.

The first major European regulation to recover biodiversity and a key piece of the European Green Deal, which seeks to restore at least 20% of the EU's land and maritime areas by 2030, is in serious danger of not passing the final vote to become law due to the pressures that rural protests are causing in several governments just over two months before the European elections.

“It would be an enormous failure not to have a commitment to restore nature (…) and it would be enormously irresponsible to drop the entire European green agenda,” warned Ribera during a new meeting of EU Environment Ministers.

At a time when climate change is causing more and more extreme events, from long droughts to vast floods, the third vice president insisted that “Europe cannot afford to let the green agenda drop, just as it cannot afford to of letting their ecosystems die or leaving their climate system in poor condition.”

The biodiversity law, which seeks to recover ecosystems in a Europe where 81% of terrestrial and aquifer habitats are in poor condition, is one of the most politically charged files of the current European mandate.

Claiming that they were defending the countryside and food security after the first European electoral setbacks at the beginning of 2023, the European People's Party (EPP), together with far-right forces and the support of some liberals, repeatedly tried to overthrow it.

They were not successful, although they did achieve that the compromise text approved in November, under the rotating Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU, was a much less ambitious version of the original.

However, and after very narrowly obtaining its final ratification in the European Parliament last month, now that it is time to give the final approval to the Twenty-Seven, it is once again on the brink of death due to the retreat of some States, in full protests from the countryside that tries to capitalize on an extreme right for which polls predict great advances in the European elections.

The pressure is such that the current Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU decided to withdraw the final ratification of the States scheduled for this Monday, given that the required qualified majority was not met (the favorable vote of 55% of the Member States, representing at least 65% of the EU population).

Forcing a vote could have led to complete failure of the law, as there would be no time to renegotiate it before the European elections in June.

But leaving it for later generates even more uncertainties, due to the foreseeable advance in June of the denialist extreme right in the European Parliament, which would make it even more difficult for legislation of this type to advance if it has not done so in a chamber like the current one.

The key currently lies with Hungary, since it has changed its initial vote in favor of expressing its opposition to a regulation – be it a negative vote or abstention, in this type of vote both count as a no – that it considers too “ideologized”, according to one diplomatic source during the meeting of European leaders last week.

His Secretary of State for the Environment, Anikó Raisz, demanded this Monday in Brussels, where there was finally a discussion without a vote on the law to clarify positions, more “flexibility for member states” in the regulations, although in principle this is already closed .

And that is another of the problems pointed out by the Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevicius, and the countries - more than a dozen - that this Monday expressed their concern about the attempts to reopen an agreement already negotiated with the European Parliament and to which normally only It remained to be ratified in a protocol manner: the credibility of an EU that at the 2022 Montreal summit acquired strong commitments on biodiversity, made explicit in the LNR.

“With this blockade, the EU is putting its international reputation at stake, it is a very bad signal that we are sending from our institutions,” Sinkevicius warned.

And not just behind closed doors, added the Irish minister, Eamon Ryan: “If we do not approve what has already been negotiated, we will undermine the entire European legislative process, that is what we are risking, beyond the protection of nature,” he stressed. .

The head of Climate Change and Environment for the Brussels region, Alain Maron, promised to “work” to try to move the law forward before the Belgian presidency ends.

“It is still a priority for the Belgian presidency to be successful in this file and we will do everything possible to achieve it,” he assured, despite the fact that Belgium has announced from the beginning that it will abstain.

Although as current president of the EU Council Belgium is supposed to act as an “honest mediator” in the files it handles, in recent days its prime minister, Alexander De Croo – who already spoke last year of the need for green legislative “pause”—has been accused in several Belgian media of having acted behind the scenes to bring down the LRN, something he has formally denied.

Upon her arrival at the meeting on Monday, the German Minister of the Environment, Steffi Lemke, recalled that less than two weeks ago, the European Environment Agency itself warned that Europe is not prepared to face growing climate risks and called for all States to “help pass this law in this legislature.”

“The preservation of life is the task of all parties, especially conservative parties should feel obliged to preserve life,” she said.

For his part, Ribera warned that “nature does not allow recreational breaks, the climate system does not allow recreational breaks.”

For this reason, he insisted, “it would be enormously irresponsible to listen to those who demand that the green agenda be stopped or go backwards.”

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