The EU just backed a major nature conservation law. Here’s what it means.
Global News
After weeks of lobbying against the plan, the legislature still supported the general outlines of a European Commission bill in a razor-thin 324-312 vote with 12 abstentions.
The European Union’s parliament on Wednesday backed a major plan to protect nature and fight climate change in a cliffhanger vote that had the 27-nation bloc’s global green credentials at stake.
After weeks of intense lobbying against the plan, the legislature still supported the general outlines of a European Commission bill in a razor-thin 324-312 vote with 12 abstentions.
The plan is a key part of the EU’s vaunted European Green Deal that seeks to establish the world’s most ambitious climate and biodiversity targets and make the bloc the global point of reference on all climate issues.
The vote “marks a significant milestone in our commitment to fulfilling the Green Deal,” said MEP Mohammed Chahim of the socialist group.
The plans proposed by the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, set binding restoration targets for specific habitats and species, with the aim to cover at least 20 per cent of the region’s land and sea areas by 2030.
After weeks of intense haggling and despite the staunch opposition of the legislature’s biggest group, the European People’s Party, the plan survived in the highly anticipated vote at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
The Christian Democrat’s EPP opposition also highlighted the fundamental struggle in Europe on how to deal with climate issues. Despite the succession of droughts, floods and heat waves increasingly hitting countless areas in Europe, the EPP wanted to hit the pause button on such environmental action and concentrate on economic competitiveness first and foremost over the next five years.
Together with other conservatives and the hard right, it said the plans would undermine food security, fuel inflation and hurt farmers. Thousands of scientists and even multinational companies argued instead to back the proposed plans.
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