Ghosts of EU’s rightward future haunt nature law fight 

Right-wing alliances, last-minute vetoes and anti-green populism: The European Union just got a glimpse of its future. 

On paper, Tuesday was a good day for liberal and left-wing European Parliament members, who managed to pass a landmark nature preservation bill despite multiple attempts to shoot it down. 

But the law’s narrow survival underscored broader trends likely to hamper green lawmaking following this summer’s bloc-wide election. 

After Europe’s conservatives last year succeeded in watering down the legislation, known as the Nature Restoration Law, Tuesday’s vote became a low-risk testing ground for new alliances and tactics. 

On the eve of the vote, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), the Parliament’s largest group, took the unusual step of renouncing a deal already reached between the Parliament and EU governments — a rebuke of top EU executive Ursula von der Leyen, who hails from the EPP and proposed the law.

The group then went on to trial a right-wing coalition, joining forces with the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) — home to parties like Italian leader Georgia Meloni’s post-fascist Brothers of Italy — and the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) to try and kill the law. 

The EPP’s attempt failed — for now.

Polls show the Parliament is likely to become more right-wing after June’s election, with the ECR and ID projected to make large gains. That means controversial green measures may soon struggle to pass. In fact, a POLITICO calculation based on current polling showed that the Nature Restoration Law would have failed in the projected next Parliament if Tuesday’s vote breakdown remained the same. 

New coalition

In this Parliament, the law — which aims to gradually rehab Europe’s distressed land by 2050 — passed by 329 to 275 votes.

Its survival, however, was only thanks to a handful of rebel conservatives, acknowledged French MEP Pascal Canfin of the centrist Renew Europe group, which is split over the bill. 

“If we have won the battle for the nature restoration law, it is because part of the right was able to resist the alliance with the anti-ecological populism of the far right,” said Canfin, who also serves as the chair of Parliament’s environment committee. 

The EPP has tried to sink Green Deal legislation before, most notably in the previous parliamentary vote on the Nature Restoration Law in July. 

But this time around, the group did not file its own motion for rejection, instead backing the ECR’s push — a sign that the EU’s center-right family is flirting with the option of a right-wing coalition. 

Left-wing parties were quick to criticize the EPP’s support for the ECR — a major shift given that the center right in recent years largely worked with the Socialists, Renew and the Greens to pass numerous Green Deal laws.

“The EPP must show that they stand behind the Green Deal and the head of the European Commission from their own party and won’t fall for the populist call of the far right,” Green MEP Bas Eickhout said after the vote. 

But von der Leyen herself has also signaled openness to an alliance with right-wing MEPs, avoiding a clear “yes” or “no” response last week when asked if she would work with the ECR. 

Empty rules

The EPP’s effort to kill the law on Tuesday came even though the legislation is already a shadow of its former self. 

During negotiations between the Parliament and EU governments, numerous concessions were granted to try and win over EPP support, including narrowing the scope of the areas that merit restoration before 2030. 

The law now also has an “emergency brake” the European Commission can activate for a year for countries facing a food crisis. Additionally, key peatland restoration rules will only be “voluntary” for farmers and private landowners.

Nevertheless, the conservative group decided to vote against the final text after an internal deliberation Monday night. The group’s leaders argued the concessions weren’t enough to win their support amid intensifying farmers’ protests across the Continent.

“We still believe that the legislation is badly drafted and was never up to the task in front of us,” EPP leader Manfred Weber said during a press conference ahead of the vote. 

The bill, he argued, introduces “additional bureaucratic rules for our farmers” at a time when “we have to ask our farmers to produce more and not less to stabilize inflation.”

Nevertheless, he insisted the EPP is “fully committed to climate change and also to the biodiversity goals agreed at international level.” 

It was a startling move to some lawmakers who had worked alongside EPP members for weeks to get a deal with the imprimatur of Parliament and all EU countries. Traditionally, once EU legislation reaches that stage, the final votes are mere rubber-stamping exercises. 

“We still believe that the legislation is badly drafted and was never up to the task in front of us,” EPP leader Manfred Weber said | Julien Warnand/EFE via EPA

Not any more. 

Socialist MEP César Luena, who led work on the bill, said he was “surprised” by the “lack of loyalty” the EPP showed to the deal it had helped reach in November.

“Those involved in the negotiation know that we really showed a great deal of flexibility in negotiations, we lowered ambitions,” the Spanish MEP said. “But despite that there were people from the EPP who … fell for the discourse of the far right.”

Breaking an agreement this late in the legislative process is so rare that it can be seen as negotiating in bad faith. But Germany has broken that taboo repeatedly over the past year, setting a trend others are now adopting.

Currently, Berlin is blocking the adoption of already-agreed rules on corporate due diligence in the Council of the EU, just like it did a year ago on an agreement regarding banning new combustion engine cars from 2035. 

Luena, the Socialist MEP, criticized this tactic. “I don’t think it’s going to lead anywhere good,” he said, arguing that trying to junk a settled deal only “reduces credibility.”

The EPP justified its 11th-hour opposition by arguing the new law would harm farmers, who blockaded Brussels’ EU quarter with tractors on Monday. 

“We welcome the fact that the revised legal text bears little resemblance to the original proposal,” EPP vice chair Siegfried Mureșan said ahead of the vote. “But it is still better to start from scratch and put farmers’ interests first.”