The European Parliament will vote on Thursday in Brussels on a 12-month delay to the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) to provide corporations and authorities extra time to organize. Nonetheless, amendments proposed by the European Individuals’s Get together (EPP) go additional and will weaken the affect of the EU regulation. Criticism comes from environmentalists and Greens. Austria’s forestry trade and the conservative ÖVP help the amendments.
As issues at present stand, most provisions of the deforestation regulation, which has already come into drive, will apply from the top of the yr – for small companies, the foundations will apply from the top of 2025. Originally of October, the EU Fee, beneath stress from a number of nations, proposed pushing again each deadlines by one yr – shortly afterwards, the EU member states additionally agreed to this.
With out additional negotiations, the brand new deadlines are imagined to be accredited by the Members of the European Parliament on Thursday in a fast-track process. Nonetheless, the amendments proposed by EPP MP Christine Schneider might put a cease to this plan. She desires to push the deadline again by 24 as a substitute of 12 months, and the regulation itself must also be weakened. This, in flip, would make negotiations with the Council and the EU Fee crucial. With the votes of the EPP and the additional right-wing factions, the motions might move the Parliament.
The positions of the Austrian MEPs on the subject clearly differ. “The brand new deforestation regulation have to be utterly overturned,” calls for FPÖ MEP Roman Haider (PfE). “The deforestation regulation gives no added worth and harms the agricultural work that must be appreciated and never sabotaged by pointless rules,” criticizes then ÖVP MEP Alexander Bernhuber (EPP) in regards to the EU regulation, which he, like Schneider, nonetheless voted for in spring 2023.
Criticism of the strategy taken by the EPP additionally comes from SPÖ MEP Günther Sidl. “The European Individuals’s Get together desires to additional weaken the whole regulation with new amendments. The clear goal of those new EPP submissions is to discover a majority with the right-wing factions,” says the Social Democrat. “We shouldn’t have the time to blindly observe the lobbyists of the wooden trade whereas the local weather disaster with storms and droughts threatens our meals safety and washes away our villages,” Austrian MEP Thomas Waitz (Greens) countered in a press launch. (13.11.2024)
