The Environment Committee of the European Parliament has voted to reject the proposed EU Nature Restoration Law.
In a tight vote, 44 of the 88 committee members voted in favour of the proposed legislation while the remaining 44 voted against it.
This was after debating and voting on thousands of amendments to the proposed legislation.
The outcome of the voting process means that the parliamentary committee did not secure a majority of its members in favour of the law.
Consequently, it will now recommend that the European Parliament rejects the proposed law in a plenary parliamentary voting session scheduled for July.
The Nature Restoration Law, proposed by the European Commission last year as part of its flagship Green Deal policy, has already been rejected by the fisheries and agriculture committees.
The law would require legally-binding recovery measures for at least 20% of EU land and 20% of sea by 2030, and all areas in need of restoration by 2050.
The European Commission says 81% of protected habitats in Europe are in a poor state.
However, the law has faced strong opposition from farming, forestry and fisheries groups, and has been fiercely opposed by centre-right and right-wing MEPs in the European Parliament.
The law will now go before the European Parliament plenary session, but given the fact that three committees have rejected the proposal, it is unlikely to pass in its current form.
On 20 June, EU member states narrowly voted to adopt their negotiating mandate on the Nature Restoration Law.
Poland, the Netherlands, Italy, Finland and Sweden are said to have voiced concerns, arguing they could not support the compromise agreement as it stands.
Belgium and Austria abstained, while Ireland voted in favour.
It is understood Ireland supported the proposal after amendments which would allow member states to take into account specific national circumstances in terms of social, economic, regional and local characteristics and population density.
Today’s vote by the Environment Committee was necessary because the committee had attempted to reach a conclusion on 15 June but ran out of time due to some 2,500 amendments.
At the beginning of that session, 88 MEPs had voted on a motion led by the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) to kill the proposal, but the result came in tied, meaning the attempt failed.
The committee rescheduled the vote to today.
The European Commission has argued that the law will be necessary if the EU is to meet its legally binding 2050 climate neutrality target, due to the role that soils and forests play in storing CO2.
Opponents of the law say it will hamper food production and will badly hit farmers, already struggling due to the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the Dáil on 23 May that there were aspects of the law "that go too far in my view, particularly if it comes to taking agricultural land out of use for food production and, indeed, in urban areas, there are issues where it might become harder, for example, to turn a grass pitch into an all-weather pitch."
Why is the proposed Nature Restoration Law so controversial?
The two Irish members of the Environment Committee, Green MEP Grace O'Sullivan and Left MEP Mick Wallace, both supported the proposal.
Following the vote Ms O’Sullivan said: "In a period where we are losing healthy habitats and animal populations at a rate of knots, it is vital that we get a more ambitious outcome in the plenary vote in July. We know that biodiversity collapse immediately threatens nature and agriculture, it is unacceptable for political leaders to choose to do nothing."
Mr Wallace said: "I'm disappointed with the outcome of the vote. Six months of work has been thrown out with this vote. But there is still a long way to go. We still have a lot of work to do to ensure that the Parliament can approve a position in the plenary so that we can start negotiations with the Council. I still have hope that we can eventually pass this desperately needed legislation.
The Irish MEP also accused the EPP of running a "campaign of blatant disinformation".
No Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil or Sinn Féin MEPs had a vote on the environment committee.
Colm Markey, Fine Gael MEP for Midlands-North-West, voted against the regulation in the agriculture committee in May. However, he said there had been significant improvements in the text since then.
An internal Fine Gael note suggested the party would support the proposal if redrafted, saying that the current text "forces, rather than incentivises, and it lacks definition".
The note said: "The fact that the Commission issued a follow-up paper with changes to improve and clarify their original text, after the Fisheries and Agriculture Committees both rejected their proposal, is clear evidence of that. The five Fine Gael MEPs welcomed this clarification from the Commission."
The failure of the Environment Committee to approve the Nature Restoration Law does not mean that it is doomed.
The European Parliament plenary could face a "motion to reject", and if it is carried by a simple majority the President of the European Parliament can ask the Commission to withdraw the proposal.
However, if the motion to reject the law fails, then the plenary will then vote on further amendments, despite today’s rejection by the environment committee.
Should the plenary vote in favour of an amended text, then the European Parliament would enter final trilogue negotiations with member states and the European Commission.
What new binding targets are included in the proposed law?
· Restore habitats and species protected by the EU nature legislation.
· Reverse the decline of pollinators by 2030.
· No net loss of green urban spaces by 2030 and a minimum of 10% tree canopy cover in European cities.
· Improved biodiversity on farmland e.g. for grassland butterflies, farmland birds, high-diversity landscape features.
· Restore drained peatlands.
· Healthier forests with improved biodiversity.
· At least 25,000 km of free-flowing rivers by 2030.
· Restore seagrasses and sea bottoms.
What is rewetting?
· Rewetting is only one aspect of the Nature Restoration Law. It means raising the level of the water table on peaty soils that were previously drained for agricultural use, i.e. the level under the surface at which the soil is permanently wet. In most cases, grazing and farming of land can continue.
· The purpose of rewetting is to allow peatlands function more in tune with their natural processes, and to allow native plants and wildlife to return. For example, cranes have returned to restored to rewetted Bord na Móna bogs in the midlands. Instead of leaking carbon into the atmosphere, bogs when allowed to stay, wet act as a store.
· The European Commission has proposed rewetting 25,000 hectares by 2030, rising to 116,500 hectares by 2050. However, significant caveats have been proposed, which mean that an awful lot of the heavy lifting can be done on public land.
· The commission’s proposal provides that the targets can be achieved across a range of areas, such as former Bord na Móna bogs and Coillte forestry.
· This means that the 2030 targets could be met using public land alone, while only about an eighth of the 2050 target would need to involve private land.
Additional reporting: Tony Connelly
