In their offensive against the European Green Deal, the Christian Democrats of the European People’s Party (EPP), allies of the far right, have just won a victory. On Thursday, November 14, they managed to get the European Parliament to approve the one-year postponement of the law against deforestation, as well as greater flexibility of this regulation that would prohibit the marketing of products (cocoa, coffee, soybeans) in Europe. , palm oil, wood, etc.) from deforested lands.
It is a day that may go down in the history books of the Union for two reasons. Because it will have marked the beginning of the unraveling of the rules that the Twenty-seven have adopted in recent years to fight global warming and protect the environment. But also because it will have been the first concrete manifestation of an alliance between the right and the extreme right capable, since the European elections in June, of forming a majority in Strasbourg.
What will happen in Brussels and Strasbourg in the coming weeks may turn this vote into an epiphenomenon in the life of the community institutions. But, for now, the route of regulation against deforestation constitutes, as MEP (Renew) Pascal Canfin says, “the sign that there may be a political crisis in Europe”.
Seats won
However, the EPP supported this legislation, as did the Social Democrats (S&D) and the Liberals (Renew), with whom it forms a pro-European majority in Strasbourg. When it is published in the Official Gazette in June 2023, no one imagines that, a year and a half later, it will be diluted.
But, since then, both industrialists and farmers have denounced the excesses of the rules and regulations of the green deal. The EPP, sensitive to their demands, saw its place as a leading political force in the Strasbourg Parliament reinforced with the June elections, the nationalist and populist parties gained seats, the liberals and the greens lost some.
The law against deforestation was quickly attacked by the right of the new chamber, when numerous third countries, starting with the American ally, but also Europeans, primarily Germany, demanded its postponement. Highly criticized by Brazil, for whom it further complicated the negotiations for a free trade agreement between the Union and Mercosur, it was the first victim of this new context.
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