Governments freeze EU nature restoration law

EU government representatives today shelved the EU’s new law to restore nature in Europe, ahead of a meeting that was supposed to be a rubber-stamp approval of a deal negotiated months ago. Diplomats preparing next week’s meeting of European environment ministers quietly dropped the nature restoration law from the agenda, effectively freezing the law’s final approval, maybe even until after the European Parliament elections and the appointment of a new European Commission.

Špela Bandelj Ruiz, biodiversity campaigner at Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe said: “Nature across Europe is heavily degraded, leaving us vulnerable to droughts and heatwaves, and seriously compromising the water and soil. Governments torpedoing the first tiny steps towards restoring European nature is a disgrace. They are playing with the lives of future generations, and the livelihoods of the farmers they claim to protect. With no nature, there is no food and no future.”