Welcome to Better Europe’s weekly update on EU Affairs.
CUTTING THROUGH RED TAPE, OR JUST CUTTING TREES?
Just months before the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) takes effect, conservative MEPs are already pushing to prune it. Earlier this week, the Parliament’s environment committee backed an EPP-led resolution calling for a new “negligible risk” country category, designed to spare most EU countries from the regulation’s strict controls. The non-binding text, passed with the help of far-right groups, urges the Commission to rethink its risk classification, currently based on 2020 data. But critics say the move reeks of political convenience. “Hypocritical,” said Green MEP Thomas Waitz, noting that the same parties had fought hard against a forest monitoring law that would have provided more up-to-date data in the first place. The Commission says a revision of the risk list is planned for 2025, once fresh global forest data becomes available. Until then, the EUDR is set to kick in on 30 December, with a six-month grace period for SMEs. In other words: the EUDR hasn’t even sprouted yet, but some in Parliament are already reaching for the axe.
FLEET OF OMNIBUSES ARRIVES IN COPENHAGEN
Next week, the Poles will hand the Council Presidency baton over to the Danes. And by all means, their hands will be full. Under their chosen slogan “A strong Europe in a changing world’, Copenhagen aims to ‘work for a secure Europe as well as a competitive and green Europe’. But their time leading the EU will be dominated by a fleet of deregulating omnibuses disguised as simplification, unfinished proposals, and the post-2027 agriculture and broader EU budget. The notorious Omnibus I, aside from the easily agreed CBAM part, will have to be trilogued, along with the EPP-induced Green Claims Directive drama (see below), and the decades-old revamp of pharmaceutical rules. The to-do list continues, with the EU’s 2035 and 2040 climate targets, finding ways to fund the newly agreed 5% defense spending, and the looming 9 July deadline for Trump’s return to 50% “reciprocal tariffs” on European goods. Danish Prime Minister Frederiksen will also have the opportunity to put her hard-line migration stance to the test with the Commission’s proposed Common European System for Returns.
EPP THROWS TANTRUM OVER GREEN CLAIMS LAW
EU decision-making is special because the European Parliament is the only one in Europe that has no right of initiative, at least that is what we tell EU law students. Instead, this right is executed by the Commission, who are supposed to let go of their baby once they have put forward their proposal. In practise, the Commission defends its ideas in Parliament committee meetings and in Council working party meetings, and then shows its card when it is tasked to help draft an honest compromise between the two other institutions in the infamous trilogues (tri for three!). However, it’s uncommon for the Berlaymont-based institution to threaten to withdraw a proposal in case the other institutions would consider going in a direction of travel that does not suit the Commission. It might be a right that the Commission formally has, is not really not commonly used. The Commission typically withdraws proposals when they were foolish in the first place (labels on olive oil jars in restaurants), when they are completely obsolete due to changes in technology (power consumption of fax machines), or when they have been in the inter-institutional freezer for years (several taxation files). But not on the eve of the potentially final trilogue. Yet this kind of tantrum is exactly what the Commission threw on the Green Claims Directive last week, threatening to hit the nuke button on their proposal if the co-legislators would drag micro enterprises into the scope. Other political groups protested against the next level EPP power-play, but it seems the party controlling all three Houses is now ready to throw away checks and balances in European politics just to get what it wants.