ANP Meadows in the Gelderse Vallei
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 01:13
Ardy Stemerding
European Union correspondent
Ardy Stemerding
European Union correspondent
The European Parliament and the 27 EU member states have reached an agreement on the nature restoration law of former European Commissioner Frans Timmermans. The deal that is now in place is a strongly watered down version of Timmermans’ original plan.
The aim of the law is to restore damaged nature in the European Union. It also contains proposals to improve biodiversity on agricultural land. The law is desperately needed, says the European Commission, which has calculated that 81 percent of nature reserves are in poor condition.
The European Commission now wants the member states to work on restoring 30 percent of nature that is in poor condition by 2030. Natura 2000 areas are given priority. The percentage will then increase gradually: by 2050, the countries must ultimately be working on 90 percent of these areas.
On the brakes
The agreement was preceded by months of intense debate. Before the summer, it was difficult for the countries to agree among themselves on what they considered acceptable. The Netherlands did not agree to the proposal at the time. A majority could support it, but the plan had to be considerably stripped down.
The run-up to the European Parliament was even more difficult. The bill even seemed to die completely there, but in the end there was a narrow majority in favor of the law. The European Parliament stepped on the brakes even harder than the Member States. When negotiations between the member states and parliament subsequently started, it was already clear that the law would be much less drastic than Timmermans intended.
Nitrogen crisis as a specter
Rarely has an EU law provoked as much resistance as Timmermans’ nature restoration law. That resistance has a clear link with the nitrogen crisis in the Netherlands. Politicians fear that with new nature regulations their country could be locked down, just as happened in the Netherlands as a result of the nitrogen problems. This was also the main reason for the Netherlands not to agree to the plan.
BBB’s monster victory in the provincial elections reinforced this. Political parties, led by the European Christian Democrats, wanted to avoid being punished as harshly in elections in their own country as the CDA in the Netherlands. And so, together with the CDA, they turned away from Timmermans’ plan. That is why it was so difficult to reach an agreement and much less of the plan remained than in Timmermans’ original.
The law also sets targets for biodiversity in agriculture, but no hard percentages are linked to this. In the original plan, biodiversity was to be improved on 10 percent of the agricultural land.
The deal also includes agreements on planting trees (three billion by 2030). Furthermore, many human-placed obstacles in rivers must be removed by 2030, so that at least 25,000 kilometers of rivers can flow freely by that year.
Originally, the Nature Restoration Act also prescribed a so-called deterioration ban. This meant that the quality of certain nature could not deteriorate further. As expected, the ban on deterioration has been deleted in the final compromise. Instead, there is now a best efforts obligation. Countries must therefore do their best to prevent natural areas from deteriorating.
Moreover, it was precisely this element that caused lasting resistance in the Netherlands, even in a weakened form. The government feared that with such an obligation to make efforts, restrictive measures could still be imposed through the courts, for example in construction. Even though the law states from the start that there are exceptions when a construction project serves the public interest, for example in the case of wind turbines intended to achieve climate goals.
Now that parliament and member states have agreed, all that remains is formal approval and the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. After that, the law becomes a fact. Normally these votes are a formality, but now the outcome cannot yet be fully predicted. This depends on the support of the European Christian Democrats in the European Parliament. Only if enough of them vote in favor will the law reach the finish line.
2023-11-10 00:13:00
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