EU nature law fight ends in pyrrhic victory for Green Deal defenders

EU negotiators have finally clinched a political deal on new rules aimed at boosting nature restoration across the bloc, saving the legislation from a conservative-led campaign to kill it.

But if green-minded politicians let out a sigh of relief after months of campaigning and hours of negotiations on Thursday, the final deal is bittersweet as it came at a high price: major concessions to the center-right European People’s Party.

The largest group in the European Parliament and the most vocal critic of the bill aimed at restoring the EU's damaged ecosystems, the EPP, over the past year led a tough campaign against the legislation, claiming it would hurt Europe's farmers and put the bloc's food security at risk. It successfully weakened the Parliament's position going into the talks, where it pushed to water down key aspects even further.

Writing on X after the deal was reached, German MEP Peter Liese celebrated that what had been "a piranha" is "now a goldfish without teeth."

“I wanted more, of course, but this is a deal,” the Parliament’s lead negotiator César Luena, a member of the center-left Socialists & Democrats, told POLITICO following Thursday's nine-hour-long talks. “This is the first brick” to building a strong biodiversity restoration policy in the EU, he added.

Spain’s Climate and Environment Minister Teresa Ribera, who led the talks on behalf of the EU27, also told POLITICO she was happy with the agreement, arguing that the weakened legislation is still a "milestone" for the EU.

Green MEP Jutta Paulus admitted it was "very painful" to see several key targets weakened further, but stressed the importance of having reached an agreement.

“Looking at where we're coming from with a very weak [Parliament] mandate, with a lot of exemptions, derogations, emergency breaks … I think we can be content with what we got,” she told POLITICO outside the negotiating room Thursday evening.

Painful compromises

To secure a deal, negotiators were forced to introduce a number of flexibilities to appease skeptics from the conservative and liberal camps, as well as some EU countries.

Following a strong push from the EPP, the final deal — seen by POLITICO — calls on EU countries to prioritize restoration efforts in Natura 2000 protected sites until the end of the decade, meaning they would be under no legal obligation to implement the measures in other natural areas until 2030.

The text also stipulates that the obligation to restore at least 30 percent of drained peatlands by 2030 "remains voluntary" for farmers and private landowners.

Those tweaks were introduced to address "circumstances where [restoration goals] may be difficult" for EU countries to achieve, according to Ribera, who added she is “convinced” that “both the Council and the Parliament can support what we have agreed.”

In another concession to the EPP, the political agreement also introduces an “emergency brake” clause that can be activated by the European Commission, allowing EU countries to pause implementation of restoration measures on agricultural land for a year if there is a food crisis.

The EPP has touted the deal as a victory, stressing in a press release that the rules have been "strongly revised" and include "notable improvements."

But outside the negotiating room on Thursday, lead negotiator for the EPP Christine Schneider said the group still has to "discuss the result," suggesting that support for the deal in a final vote in the Parliament's environment committee later this month is not yet certain.

Back in July, the EPP — together with European Conservatives and Reformists, the far-right Identity and Democracy and part of the liberal Renew Europe groups — blocked the Parliament from finding a majority in favor of the nature restoration law in the ENVI committee.

Luena is optimistic that won’t happen again this time around. “We will have a clear majority in the ENVI committee,” he predicted.

ENVI committee chair Pascal Canfin also said he was confident the deal would pass. "We have sufficiently positive signals from the EPP negotiating teams to believe that we will have a positive result on November 29."