EU ministers to vote on contested nature protection rules

Good morning. Ursula von der Leyen will take a big step towards five more years at the helm of the EU tonight at a private supper of the bloc’s leaders, where they are ready to approve her bid for another term as commission president.

Here, our climate correspondent reports on today’s knife-edge decision to approve a critical piece of the EU’s green legislation package, and Laura hears a Swedish pitch for Brussels to promote security over privacy.

Protection racket

The EU’s Green Deal faces its first post-election test today: Ministers will decide whether to pass a heavily contested nature conservation law, writes Alice Hancock.

Context: The bloc’s climate package was set out in the wake of a surge of support for climate policies during the last EU elections in 2019. But environmental sentiment did not get as much support in this month’s vote, as right-wing parties campaigned against it and the Greens received a drubbing.

A final vote on the Nature Restoration Law, which sets the goal to preserve 20 per cent of the EU’s land and seas by 2030, had been postponed several times in the election run-up, as the bill is seen by some as constraining the land available for industry and farming.

But it’s back on the agenda today, and could finally pass after Austria’s climate minister at the last minute had a change of heart. Leonore Gewessler yesterday said it would “go against my conscience” not to support the bill, although her decision could spell trouble at home.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN’s environment programme, warned that if the EU did not pass the law, it would undermine international commitments on conservation agreed in Montreal in 2022.

And that would affect the bloc’s credibility for negotiating other key climate measures in multilateral forums.

“The EU has to live up to its promises . . . If Europe, which was pushing for [the Montreal agreement] stands back, Europe will lose and we will all lose,” Andersen said.

“If you walk away from the deal — we’ve seen other countries walking away from a deal — [it] undermines the process,” she added.

Belgium and Slovakia could also decide to back the law having previously abstained, EU diplomats said.

Belgian caretaker Prime Minister Alexander de Croo has previously voiced opposition to the law. “I’m not against the idea that nature is preserved and has its space, but this is bad legislation,” he told the FT last month.

Despite the anti-green shift, Andersen said she had not lost hope for the Green Deal.

“I would not necessarily say that it’s going to go in a detrimental way because I believe that more and more political parties, across the full spectrum, are seeing the absolute imperative of environmental stewardship.”

Chart du jour: Bad habit

Europe’s gas imports from Russia overtook those from the US for the first time in almost two years, despite the bloc’s efforts to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels.

Safe or sorry

Sweden has got a proposition for the next European Commission: prioritise security rather than privacy, writes Laura Dubois.

Context: Privacy concerns have long been a thorn in the side of European law enforcement, especially when it comes to accessing encrypted communications online. But squaring the circle between protecting citizen’s data privacy, and giving investigators access to encrypted communications of potential criminals has so far proven extremely difficult.

“There’s always a balance of different interests when it comes to fighting crime . . . a balance between the interests of privacy and efficient law enforcement,” Swedish justice minister Gunnar Strömmer told the FT. “This balance tends to tip over to certain privacy interests, and not benefit efficient enforcement.”

According to Strömmer, “legal acts within the union tend to [be] biased in favour of more narrow privacy interests.” This means favouring “the privacy interests of, say, people that are suspected for having committed crimes” and not those of “potential victims”, he says.

“The incoming commission should make it the key priority to change perspectives in EU efforts to fight organised crime,” he said.

Last week, the Swedish minister presented a paper to his EU colleagues, calling for better access to digital information and greater collaboration with law enforcement agencies when drafting legislation.

Strömmer says that the perspective of law enforcement is often lacking in legislation, for instance in the EU’s landmark new laws on Big Tech and artificial intelligence.

But he admitted that it was difficult to reconcile the different priorities. When asked how data access can be facilitated without undermining the privacy of encrypted chats on WhatsApp and other platforms, Strömmer said: “I am not in a position today to point out the technical solutions.”

What to watch today

1. EU leaders meet for informal summit in Brussels.

2. EU environment ministers meet in Luxembourg.

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