Greens/EFA call for binding legislation to protect nature

Today, the European Parliament will debate the Environment Committee report on the EU’s ‘Biodiversity Strategy for 2030: Bringing nature back into our lives,’ which endorses the goals for protecting and restoring biodiversity as set down in the Commission strategy communicated in May 2020. The report calls for a legally binding EU Biodiversity Law. A number of amendments have been tabled that threaten to weaken the report. The Greens/EFA call on all members of the Parliament to vote down these amendments, and to vote to keep the ENVI report as it is, in order to ensure a strong Parliament position on the Biodiversity Strategy.

Ville Niinistö, Greens/EFA MEP and shadow rapporteur in the Environment Committee, comments:

“Biodiversity is the existential foundation of all life on our planet. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 sends a strong message that we need to urgently scale up nature protection in the EU. European countries do not have the credibility to demand, for example, a halt to deforestation in the Amazon, if we are not ready to defend our own nature within the EU. The Parliament’s vote this week is our chance to call on the Commission to take action, including introducing a legally binding EU Biodiversity Law, in the same spirit as the EU Climate Law.

“There’s no room for compromises: we must protect nature on both land and sea. European forests are especially under threat and exposed to multiple and growing pressures, despite their prominent role as a shelter for biodiversity and their contribution to climate mitigation. The proposed amendments are a big step back and will considerably weaken this much needed report and the protection of biodiversity and life that it is supposed to support, MEPs must vote down these amendments.“