Yesterday (Tuesday 14 May) environment ministers from 11 national governments wrote to their counterparts across the EU, urging them to adopt the law at the next Environmental Council meeting on 17 June.
Spanish Vice-President and Ecological Transition Minister urged EU countries to save the beleaguered Nature Restoration Law, in an exclusive interview with Euractiv in Brussels on Friday 12 April.
Poland and Finland have resisted pressure to support the divisive Nature Restoration Law and instead switched to becoming explicit opponents, seriously limiting the Belgian EU Council Presidency’s options for moving the file forward.
14 countries including Germany, France and Spain called for a quick adoption of the EU’s flagship nature protection policy during today’s (Monday 25 March) Environmental Council meeting in Brussels. But opponents of the law - including Hungary who joined their ranks last week - remained defiant.
Hungary’s last minute decision to withdraw support for the proposal means that the law’s future is uncertain. A planned vote during Monday’s (25 March) meeting of national environmental ministers is now postponed.
On Wednesday 13 March, the European Commission published the latest list of infringement proceedings against Member States. Most of the alleged failures to implement EU environmental law concern the bloc’s biodiversity rules.
Europe needs to take immediate action to address the rapidly increasing climate challenges, the EU's environment agency said in its first European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA), published on Monday (11 March), which identified 36 major risks.
A coalition of centre-right, far-right and national conservative EU lawmakers have failed to vote down the EU’s controversial nature restoration law amid a surge of farmers’ protests and European elections looming.
As the European Parliament works on a revision of the regulation on microplastics, EU lawmakers and NGOs travelled outside Brussels to see for themselves the scale and impact of plastic pellet pollution on site.
Ambitious new nature and biodiversity policies are needed, say environmental stakeholders. Activists are calling for the European Commission’s proposed Nature Restoration Law to set strong biodiversity targets, just as the Green Deal set robust climate targets.
France will put on hold the rollout of its national plant protection reduction plan and may adopt an EU measurement indicator to measure a molecule toxicity factor despite criticism from NGOs.
The EU Commission started legal proceedings against Portugal at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on Wednesday in two individual cases for its alleged failure to comply with a ruling on the conservation of sites considered Special Areas of Conservation and threatened sanctions.
In a major blow to the EU's Green Deal and Farm to Fork framework, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Tuesday (6 February) that she will withdraw the Sustainable Use Regulation (SUR), which sought to halve pesticide use by 2030.
As EU policymakers prepare to announce the specifics of the 2040 target, there is a clear risk the EU’s climate ambition could be undermined through a poor design, write Eadbhard Pernot, Mark Preston Aragones and Fabiola De Simone.
While only around a third of the world’s rivers “remain free flowing,” according to campaign group International Rivers, the situation is worse in Europe, where the number of ‘wild’ or free-flowing rivers can likely be counted on both hands.
In an interview with Euractiv, French Secretary of State for Biodiversity Sarah El Haïry reflected on the EU's progress this year, following the COP28 summit in Dubai, the adoption of France's national biodiversity strategy as well as the EU's pesticides directive and nature restoration law.
The Nature Restoration Law, which was approved during talks between the European Parliament and the Council, comes a little late in view of the ecological calamity raging on our doorstep, but at least it's there, writes Jutta Paulus.
While big producers of palm oil, cocoa or coffee are ready to implement EU’s newly adopted anti-deforestation regulation, governments in Malaysia and Indonesia say more time is needed for small producers to meet the EU's bureaucratic requirements.
Focusing restoration efforts on degraded forests can deliver accelerated climate and biodiversity benefits because these areas retain elements of their natural ecology and can recover quickly, write Janice Weatherley-Singh and Tim Rayden.
More than a decade after EU-wide nature reserves were created to protect the continent’s most vulnerable species, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) found on Thursday (21 September) that Germany failed to adequately protect them.
Nearly 70 countries at the United Nations on Wednesday (20 September) signed a first-ever treaty on protecting the international high seas, raising hopes that it will come into force soon and protect threatened ecosystems vital to the planet.
Scientists are urging national and EU authorities to take swift action against the rapid spread of the fire ant, a highly invasive species with the potential to cause major health and environmental damage.
As the EU shifts sustainable agricultural practices for the protection of nature and biodiversity, it ought to still look out for the small-scale producers and their livelihoods, writes Jonathan Mockshell.
The surge in money going into biodiversity funds is the "next frontier" of environment, social and governance (ESG) investing and warrants increased monitoring to avoid greenwashing, the European Union's securities regulator said on Thursday (31 August).
