The salvation of the European law against deforestation could well come from the Member States. In any case, this is what emerges from a meeting held on Thursday, November 21 between the Twenty-Seven and the European Parliament on the subject. The former want to postpone it for a year, until December 30, 2025, but refuse to modify it, when MEPs are campaigning for it to also be relaxed.
However, this regulation, which prohibits the marketing in Europe of products (cocoa, coffee, soy, palm oil, wood, etc.) from deforested lands, was immovable. Since it was adopted by the Twenty-seven and the European Parliament and then published in Official Gazette, in June 2023, there were no reasons for it to be the subject of new negotiations.
This is without counting Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the Commission, who, by delaying the publication of the community executive’s recommendations for their implementation, gave arguments to those who demanded its postponement. Under pressure from several countries (the United States, Brazil, Germany and Italy), as well as from her political clan, the Christian Democrats of the European People’s Party (EPP), she finally, on October 2, proposed that companies have one more year to prepare.
Von der Leyen’s unfulfilled promise
In the European Parliament, the EPP and the extreme right, at war against the European Green Deal, took advantage of the reopening of this text to modify it and try to empty it of substance. Since the European elections of June 9, they have in fact the means, combining their forces, to constitute a majority in the Strasbourg hemicycle. And to replace the pro-European majority – EPP, social democrats (S&D) and liberals (Renew) – on which Ursula von der Leyen normally relies to advance her roadmap.
On November 14, the EPP and several far-right groups led the offensive. In an unprecedented show of force, they managed to get the European Parliament to approve a new timetable for a watered-down law against deforestation. Ursula von der Leyen, who had promised the social democrats and liberals to restore the text to its original version if the right and its populist allies took advantage of the situation to modify it beyond a simple one-year postponement, ultimately did nothing.
For their part, the Member States, which also had to decide on this issue, stuck to the Commission’s initial proposal. Some, such as Italy, Sweden or Austria, certainly consider the text too bureaucratic and, in essence, are not necessarily opposed to its modification. But they know that by opening the debate they run the risk of prolonging it, since the regulation against deforestation now foreshadows the fate that awaits the green deal in the coming years.
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