The Environment committee has backed an EPP-led push to exempt most EU countries from the Commission’s anti-deforestation rules.
The non-binding resolution passed in the Parliament’s environment committee (ENVI) on Tuesday with 49 votes in favour and 37 against. It was supported by the EPP and groups to its right, including the ECR, Patriots for Europe, and the ESN.
It urges the Commission to expand the list of “high-risk” countries – currently limited to Russia, Belarus, Myanmar, and North Korea – and to create a “negligible risk” category for countries like those in the EU.
In an interview with Euractiv, Austria’s Alexander Bernhuber (EPP) said he hoped the objection would prompt the Commission to “rework the proposal.”
“We need a more nuanced approach, including a ‘no risk’ category for countries with stable or increasing forest areas,” Bernhuber said ahead of the vote.
While the vote carries no legal weight, it sends a strong political signal from the centre-right, which has recently shown its ability to influence green policy. Just last week, an EPP letter opposing the EU’s anti-greenwashing rules helped push the Commission to withdraw the plan.
“It’s another populistic move from EPP teaming up once again with the far right parties,” French MEP Pascal Canfin (Renew) told Euractiv after the vote. “As this objection doesn’t have any legal consequence, we expect the Commission not to change anything to its plan,” he added.
The conservatives’ objection also slams the Commission for relying on 2020 data in its risk classification. “Our understanding of the drivers of deforestation has evolved, and such data can no longer serve as a basis for effective policymaking,” said ECR MEP Anna Zalewska.
However, Thomas Waitz (Greens/EFA), coordinator for the Parliament’s agriculture committee (AGRI), called the move “deeply hypocritical,” noting that the same political groups had “fought tooth and nail against the Forest Monitoring Law,” which would provide more up-to-date data.
Left-leaning lawmakers have also raised concerns over the data. In a letter seen by Euractiv, Socialist MEPs Tiemo Wölken and Delara Burkhardt, Renew MEPs Pascal Canfin, and Greens Sara Matthieu and Marie Toussaint – among the others – wrote to the Commission on Tuesday.
They called on the executive to “uphold its commitment” to reviewing the classification next year using the latest datasets.
“This first classification (…) should be evolved with urgency to accurately capture in a precise and efficient manner deforestation and forest degradation hot spots across the globe, in the ‘high risk’ category,” the MEPs wrote.
Sarah Nelen, a senior official at the Commission’s DG ENVI, said the benchmarking methodology had been publicly available and that the risk assessment used data from the FAO’s forest database, last updated in 2020. She added that the legislation could be reviewed next year, once new data is published in 2025.
Regarding complaints over the classification system, she clarified that simplified procedures apply only to low-risk countries – including all EU member states – while both standard- and high-risk countries face similar obligations, with only the level of checks differing.
(adm, aw)