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EU ministers have approved a controversial law to preserve nature despite stiff opposition to the plans and threats by Austria that it would seek to annul the outcome of the vote.
The Nature Restoration Law, which was passed by the bloc’s environment ministers on Monday, sets a legally binding target for EU countries to preserve a fifth of the bloc’s land and seas but has been heavily contested by conservative, rightwing and farming groups.
Environmental campaigners had said that if EU ministers did not approve the law, the bloc would fall foul of commitments it signed up to under a UN biodiversity treaty signed in Montreal in 2022.
“Europe has to live up to its promises,” said Inger Anderson, head of the UN’s environment programme. “We are losing species at an incredibly rapid pace, and we cannot take for granted that our ecosystems will continue to deliver the services that we need if we do not take action to protect them.”
The law is a critical piece of the EU’s green legislation package but had been heavily criticised by farming and other business groups amid a wider downturn in support for the bloc’s climate policies.
The vote on the law had been delayed after Hungary pulled its support for it in March, citing its impact on farmers’ incomes. Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland also opposed the law in the final ballot, while Belgium abstained. But last-minute changes of heart from Austria and Slovakia, both of which had planned to abstain, allowed it to pass.
Austria’s chancellor Karl Nehammer said in a letter to Belgium, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, that climate minister Leonore Gewessler’s position had not been approved by Vienna and that her vote was “unlawful”. Gewessler is from the Greens, which governs in coalition with Nehammer’s conservative People’s party (ÖVP).
“The vote by Federal Minister Gewessler does not reflect the will of the country and [was] not be made in accordance with the constitution,” a spokesperson for the chancellor said, adding the government would seek to annul the vote in the European Court of Justice.
The Belgian government in its role as president confirmed that Gewessler’s vote is binding and that the law had passed.
Alain Maron, environment minister for the Brussels region, who chaired the meeting, said “the vote is given by the minister around the table . . . and there is no question about that”.
He added that the “internal controversy in Austria . . . is not my problem”.
The ÖVP said it would file criminal charges against Gewessler for “abuse of office” with Austrian prosecutors. But Vienna’s justice ministry, which has the power to quash investigations, is controlled by the Greens.
“The end does not justify the means. Gewessler is putting herself above the constitution,” said ÖVP general secretary Christian Stocker.
The dispute in Vienna exposes the deepening rifts in Austria’s coalition as it approaches national elections in September. According to the chancellery, Gewessler, the second most senior green in government after vice-chancellor Werner Kogler, was not permitted to approve the legislation due to a lack of consensus between Austria’s federal states.
The vote on the law was the first major test of the EU’s Green Deal climate law following bloc-wide elections earlier this month.
Polish opposition to the law prompted outrage from environmental groups, 229 of which signed a joint protest statement demanding that Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who took office in December, respect his election promises to protect nature.
Tusk has come under pressure from the rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS), which made contesting EU green policy a core part of its electoral campaign in the EU elections. Tusk also leads a coalition that includes PSL, a farmers’ party.
The vote on the nature restoration law had been equally divisive in the European parliament where it passed by only about 30 votes in February.
“The time for political and ideological discussion is over,” environment commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius said after the bill was approved on Monday. “Now let’s get on with the job.”
Additional reporting by Raphael Minder in Warsaw