![]() Flanders, the Dutch-speaking Northern half of the country, is almost half agricultural land, just like the rest of EU. It has powerful farming interests, which across Europe have for decades been able to effectively lobby political leaders, and at times, undermine them. And the asks under Nature Restoration Law on land use have begun running into opposition from farmers, a powerful voting lobby here in the EU.īelgium - home to the EU’s institutions - is a microcosm of these political divides. With low-hanging fruit already picked, the Green Deal now needs to focus on the most difficult and politically sensitive areas, such as agriculture. The 2019 plan calls for retooling every industry through dozens of pieces of separate legislations for the 27-nation bloc. “If the centre-right moves in the direction of climate skepticism, then we are going to be in trouble.”Īs the EU heads into elections next year, the fear is that the political divisions over nature restoration could thwart one of the pillars of a landmark green deal in a continent that has been ahead of the world in climate change policies. “Sometimes I feel a bit like Yeats in 1919, when he said the centre cannot hold,” bloc’s climate chief Frans Timmermans said in an interview, referring to a WB Yeats poem about political factions Europe after World War One. Supporters say extreme weather is already doing that. Its opponents, including the centre-right European People’s Party, say the law threatens food security and can stoke inflation. But the continuing challenge to the legislation from farmers’ lobbies shows that climate change-related policies will not be easy to implement. The European Parliament opted to keep the proposal alive, clearing a major political hurdle and preserving a key feature of the bloc’s climate agenda. Aiming to return at least 20% of land and sea back to its original state, the Nature Restoration Law has become a flashpoint for climate activists and its critics.ĮU lawmakers backed the law in a knife-edge vote this month. This river restoration project can serve as a model for what the European Union’s Green Deal wants to achieve through a new and controversial law, according to the backers of this legislation. ![]() A ferry service to cross the Meuse river to the Netherlands at the River Park Meuse Valley restoration project ![]()
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