The European Parliament will adopt the EU nature restoration law on Wednesday despite the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) attempt to boycott it, Tiemo Wölken, a leading lawmaker of the socialist S&D group, told EURACTIV in an interview, adding the EPP is trying to make Commission President Ursula von der Leyen look stupid.
While the new law is an essential part of the Green Deal and a prestige project of von der Leyen, her own EU political group, the EPP, blocked the draft during a vote in the EU Parliament’s committee responsible for the file: the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee (ENVI).
“We are now in difficult waters because it is now a matter of implementing the climate law,” the social democrat explained in an interview with EURACTIV.
Also read: Parliament lawmakers preparing final push on EU Nature Restoration Law
Despite the bitter setback in the ENVI committee, however, Wölken remains confident that the nature restoration law will be adopted in the EU Parliament’s upcoming session.
Wölken is currently the S&D coordinator in ENVI – making him one of the key players in the current battle to bring the legislation through. Since the blockade by the EPP in committee, the S&D has been actively working to forge alliances to save the legislation.
The political groups “still working constructively on the proposal” met on Tuesday for a strategic meeting. Despite the blocking attitude of the EPP, it will therefore probably be possible “to organise a majority at the end of the day”, according to Wölken.
Von der Leyen in the crossfire
However, the difficult working conditions in the EU Parliament are mainly due to the ongoing campaign ahead of next year’s EU elections, according to Wölken, who also pointed to von der Leyen being caught in the crossfire of the EPP.
“We are on the eve of the European elections, which seems to be causing nervousness, especially among the CDU/CSU. At the moment, they are doing everything they can to make the [party’s own] Commission president [Ursula von der Leyen] look stupid while at the same time blocking important laws in Parliament. Not because it’s about the matter, but because they want to make an example of it,” he added.
Also read: Has Europe’s largest political party gone rogue?
But the EPP’s tactics, which Wölken calls incomprehensible, already seem to be bearing fruit as recent polls point to the conservative and right-wing parties possibly seeing massive wins in the upcoming election.
However, a shift to the right would further complicate climate protection, according to Wölken.
“Many positions [of parliament] would once again be called into doubt,” and we would also see significant setbacks in the social cushioning of this challenge, he explains.
“However, if you then don’t provide social policy flanking, such as the climate social fund and upper limits, then that will mean that many people will be massively overburdened.”
The EPP leadership is said to be actively sabotaging texts it supported in previous negotiations to win the support of business leaders, farmers and law enforcement supporters for the elections.
“In particular, [EPP party leader] Manfred Weber is massively on a reinvention course to push his group to the right,” said Wölken, adding that Weber “welcomes the [Italian] coalition of Berlusconi’s party and Meloni, and he has said publicly that this would also be a model for the European Parliament.”
Such a scenario would be fatal for cooperation in the EU Parliament.
“We have a very clear right-wing orientation of the EPP, which cooperates with forces that can rightly be described as post-fascist.”
This makes it “clear that at the end of the day for the EPP group leader, it is only about power and not about the cause”, said Wölken.
(Kjeld Neubert | EURACTIV.de)
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