With the 2024 Nature Restoration Regulation, the EU became the first jurisdiction in the world to adopt legislation that obliges Member States to restore ecosystems in a quantifiable, monitorable, and legally enforceable framework. The deadline for Member States to submit their draft National Restoration Plans to the European Commission is September 2026.
Background
In recent years, numerous international organizations have expressed serious concern about the state of nature and have identified an urgent need to strengthen the effectiveness of existing regulatory frameworks. This conclusion is supported by reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), assessments of progress toward the Aichi Targets, and the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity. Moreover, these documents emphasize that healthy ecosystems provide food security, clean water, carbon sequestration, and protection against climate-related natural disasters. Such ecosystems are indispensable for the long-term survival, well-being, and security of humanity. Therefore, they also form the foundation of Europe’s future resilience.
It is well known that neither of the two framework conventions adopted at the Rio Conference on climate and biodiversity is progressing according to plan. The mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, aimed at the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (primarily CO₂), have reached an impasse, and the Paris Agreement has also faced effectiveness challenges. Additionally, neither the Cartagena Protocol nor the Nagoya Protocol has effectively improved biodiversity. These shortcomings can also be interpreted as a series of market failures. Structural reasons within the conventions help explain why no institution is capable of enforcing socially responsible behaviour—particularly when these documents fail to define responsibility adequately, rest on scientific foundations that remain contested, and offer avenues for responsible action that conflict with rational economic considerations.
In Europe, there were additional efforts to protect nature. The 2020 European Green Deal committed to the protection and restoration of nature. It stated that the European Commission (EC) would define measures—including legislative actions—to assist Member States in rehabilitating degraded and carbon-rich ecosystems and restoring them to good ecological condition. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, also adopted in 2020, set targets for further nature protection in the EU. As a result, the EC undertook to propose legally binding targets for the restoration of degraded EU ecosystems in 2021. The same year, a European Parliament resolution strongly welcomed the EC’s commitment to prepare a legislative proposal on nature restoration, including mandatory restoration targets. Moreover, the final report of the 2022 Conference on the Future of Europe included proposals concerning agriculture, food production, biodiversity and ecosystems, and pollution, noting EU citizens’ specific demand to restore, better manage, and expand protected areas.
The Nature Restoration Regulation
The 2024 Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR), first proposed in 2022, aims to implement measures to restore at least 20 per cent of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030 and all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050. Developed in response to the fact that more than 80 per cent of European habitats are in poor condition, the NRR focuses primarily on agricultural land, forests, urban, marine, freshwater, and wetland areas. Its goal is to enhance the role of natural and semi-natural habitats in achieving climate targets and preserving biodiversity. It requires Member States to submit detailed National Restoration Plans (NRPs), outlining specific actions and mechanisms for monitoring progress. These plans must align with the objectives of the ongoing Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the National Energy and Climate Plans.
To achieve its goals, the NRR sets binding targets. First, it requires large-scale restoration of biodiverse habitats (wetlands, forests, grasslands, rivers, lakes, heath, scrub, rocky habitats, dunes) and the recovery of species by improving or expanding them. It also aims to reverse pollinator decline by 2030 and then to increase pollinator populations, with regular monitoring. In forests, it seeks to increase the amount of standing and lying deadwood, promote uneven-aged forests, raise the number of common forest birds, and increase soil organic carbon, while improving connectivity. In urban landscapes, it demands no net loss of urban green space and tree cover by 2030, followed by a steady increase. On agricultural land, it calls for boosting grassland butterflies, farmland birds, increasing cropland organic carbon, expanding high-diversity landscape features, and restoring agricultural peatlands. In waters, it aims to restore key marine habitats (seagrass, sediments) and iconic species (dolphins, porpoises, sharks, seabirds), and to restore at least 25,000 km of free-flowing rivers by 2030.
Strengths of the NRR
The above objectives are important in themselves, but the NRR’s additional strength lies in its integrated approach. It offers nature-based solutions to climate challenges—particularly extreme weather events—while addressing impacts in a holistic manner. Under the principle of subsidiarity, the NRR presents Member States with an effective model: it requires the active participation and cooperation of societal actors (farmers, forest owners, local authorities, businesses, small local communities, NGOs) in the management of land and sea areas. This approach reflects the NRR’s recognition that implementation success depends on the collective knowledge and effort of local residents and communities.
‘The NRR…offers nature-based solutions to climate challenges…while addressing impacts in a holistic manner’
A further virtue of the legislation is its specific approach to financial support, facilitating the transition to more sustainable practices and the achievement of restoration targets. While the NRR does not specify funding instruments, it requires Member States to include financial information in their NRPs. This information should include the estimated financial needs related to implementing restoration measures, as well as indicative information on intended public and private financing and the financial support planned for affected stakeholders. With the NRPs’ standardized format, this requirement will result in a structured description of financial needs, funding sources, and support mechanisms. NRPs are therefore a key coordination tool, helping to bring together information on funding needs and available instruments in a coherent and transparent way.
Critical Voices Concerning the Regulation
Critics primarily argue that the legislation may be overly flexible and grant Member States excessive leeway in implementation. However, it should be borne in mind that geophysical and climatic differences among Member States are substantial, as are their socio-economic characteristics, and that the effective implementation primarily depends on the abilities of local residents and communities. In this context, a flexible framework may facilitate more genuinely effective, locally tailored implementation.
Path to Implementation
The NRR provides a two-year preparation period during which Member States are required to adopt their NRPs so that the necessary measures can be systematically initiated across their territory. These plans must be based on a participatory process involving societal stakeholders and must rest on standards and evidence to maximize the likelihood of success.
This two-year period, leading to the final adoption of the plans in 2027, should be used for outreach and discussion with stakeholders. Member States must ensure that their plans are prepared in an open, transparent, inclusive, and effective way. Land managers, farmers, foresters, fishers, local and regional authorities, civil society organizations, economic actors, and citizens all need to have their say in the process.
After the plans are ready, the EC will assess them, taking into account local circumstances and challenges, and will focus on their overall approach and coherence, as well as their suitability to achieve the NRR’s goals. EU-level data, such as the maps of the Natura 2000 network of protected areas and other regional-level environmental statistics, can support the assessment of these territorial specificities. NRPs should also take into account strategies, programmes, and measures—including agriculture, forestry, water, marine, climate, and spatial planning—that are already in effect and contribute to restoration objectives. This also covers relevant national plans, such as national energy and climate plans and CAP Strategic Plans.
Building on existing experience at the local, regional, and national levels can scale up successful approaches, support coherence across policy areas, and help reduce duplication and unnecessary administrative burden. Restoration measures should support climate action, climate change adaptation and mitigation, disaster risk reduction, and land degradation neutrality, and these considerations should be reflected in the choice and prioritization of restoration measures.
NRPs must be prepared using the best available scientific evidence at the time of planning, even where knowledge gaps remain. Existing EU nature-reporting data, as well as spatial information from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service, can provide valuable support for assessing ecosystem condition, identifying priorities, and informing the design of restoration measures. Data gaps should not stall planning or implementation, as NRPs can describe identified uncertainties and outline how they will progressively improve knowledge, monitoring, and data quality over time. EU-level resources, such as those made available through the EC’s Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity, can support the use of the best available science and analytical tools.