This setback in the fight against deforestation was possible thanks to an alliance of right-wing and far-right voices. On Thursday, November 14, the European Parliament approved the one-year postponement of the anti-deforestation law, but also a greater flexibility of the text, which other groups feared.
This vote relaunches a cycle of negotiations with the Member States of the European Union in the Council and leaves uncertainty about the future of this law. This new European regulation is supposed to prohibit the marketing in Europe of products (cocoa, coffee, soy, palm oil, wood, etc.) from deforested lands after December 2020.
Under pressure from Brazil, the United States and even Germany, the European Commission proposed postponing its entry into force by one year, from December 30, 2024 to December 30, 2025. This delay received approval from the Member States and then from Parliament. But the European People’s Party (EPP), the main parliamentary force, pushed to go further.
Agribusiness protest
The right approved amendments creating a new category of countries considered “risk-free”, which would be exempt from certain obligations of this regulation, for example Germany. The EPP intends to defend itself “European companies” so that they “are not unfairly penalized for excessive administrative burdens”according to French MEP Céline Imart (LR).
The measure is highly unlikely to remain in the final text, but it could delay the implementation of the law. On the left and among some centrists, we see an attempt to “empty the text of its substance” and to cut off the environmental impulse of the previous legislature marked by the European Green Deal.
Furthermore, this vote marks a de facto alliance between the right and the extreme right. Since the beginning of the school year, he has already spoken about symbolic texts about Venezuela or the budget, but not about the substance of a European law. This time, the “alternative majority” that other political forces feared was well suited to rework environmental regulation.
This vote goes against the alliance of July, when the EPP, the Social Democrats and the centrists jointly supported the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as head of the European Commission. “The signal is devastating for Europe’s commitment to climate and biodiversity protection”The German environmentalist Anna Cavazzini had already expressed her indignation.
Completed at the end of 2022 and enacted in 2023, the new anti-deforestation regulations are generally causing an outcry from the agribusiness business community and many African, Asian and South American states, concerned about the additional costs they generate for farmers, ranchers and foresters.
420 million hectares of forests destroyed
Importing companies, responsible for their supply chain, must demonstrate the traceability of their products through geolocation data provided by farmers, combined with satellite photographs. For the conservatives of the EPP, this text is a “bureaucratic monster”. The right resumes the anti-norm positioning shown during the agricultural anger at the beginning of 2024.
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However, environmental organizations consider this new legislation to be essential and hope for a world first that could involve other regions of the world. NGOs had already criticized the one-year postponement of the entry into force of the text, a “chainsaw blow”.
Thursday vote “reopens the debate in a damaging way, while this legislation is quite ambitious and innovative”estimates Blaise Desbordes, general director of the Max Havelaar fair trade association.
This debate takes on particular relevance at a time when the EU appears determined, despite opposition from France, to sign a free trade agreement with the Latin American Mercosur countries before the end of the year, which will likely increase agricultural imports.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that 420 million hectares of forests were destroyed due to deforestation between 1990 and 2020. European consumption accounts for around 10% of global deforestation, according to Parliament European.
