The largest group in the European Parliament is set to vote against the Nature Restoration Law when it comes before the parliament tomorrow (Tuesday, February 27).
The European Peoples Party (EPP), of which Fine Gael is a member, has 177 MEPs in the parliament out of the total number of MEPs of 705.
Tomorrow, the parliament will vote in a plenary (full) session of the parliament whether to accept an agreed compromise position on the law, which was reached between representatives of the parliament and Council of the EU in the ‘trilogue’ process last November.
If the Nature Restoration Law achieves the required number of votes tomorrow, than the last remaining hurdle for its final ratification will be adoption by a council meeting of environment ministers next month.
If it does not receive the required number of votes tomorrow, it will not be possible for the Nature Restoration Law to be adopted under the EU’s usual legislative procedure without a new legislative proposal being put forward from scratch.
However, as the EPP does not have a majority in the parliament, the ‘no’ votes of its members will not be sufficient on their own to defeat the proposed law.
Dirk Gotink, a spokesperson for German MEP Manfred Weber (the EPP’s chairperson in the parliament), said on X : “[The EPP Group] will vote against the nature restoration trilogue deal tomorrow in plenary.
“If the French president is really serious about his concerns for farmers, he should call on his MEPs in Renew to do the same,” Gotink added.
He was referring to French president Emmanuel Macron, who is a member of Renew Europe, the third largest group in the parliament with 101 MEPs (and of which Fianna Fáil is a member).
Macron attended an agricultural fair in Paris on Saturday (February 24), where protesting farmers forced their way into a building, despite police efforts to stop them. Video footage also showed a protester unloading manure in front of a trade stand.
President Macron met with farmer organisations and committed to recognise French agriculture and food as a “major general interest of the French nation”.
Nature Restoration Law
The Nature Restoration Law has been hugely controversial since its proposal by the European Commission in June 2022.
It has seen near universal criticism from farm organisations in Ireland and abroad, who are concerned it will see large swathes of land removed from agriculture. On the other side, environmental groups firmly back the law as they see it as necessary to secure biodiversity.
Concerns have been raised that the Nature Restoration Law could see Irish beef and other products from so-called ‘degraded ecosystems’ displaced from international markets.
This is because of ‘mirror measures’, which are mechanisms in the wider European Green Deal which aim to ensure products produced in the EU, and produced outside the EU but imported in, are produced to the same standard.
But, the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers’ Association (INHFA) is concerned that beef produced on drained agricultural peatland in Ireland – which, under the NRL, would be defined as a degraded ecosystem – could be treated the same as beef produced on, for example, deforested land in South America.