In Brussels
New failure for the “green deal”, the Brussels mantra which aims to make the European Union climate neutral by 2050. Meeting in Strasbourg on Wednesday, MEPs rejected by 299 votes against (207 for, 121 abstentions) the text on pesticides which aimed in particular to halve their use by 2030. The elected officials also did not want this same text to be fished out by new discussions in committee. Consequently, the proposal made by the Commission in 2022 falls.
With less than seven months before the European elections, it seems impossible that Brussels will manage to produce a new text and have it endorsed by the European Parliament and the Member States in such a short period of time. “There will therefore be no European law to reduce pesticides. After completely emptying the text of its content, the alliance of the right and the extreme right voted against continuing the work in committee and won by 30 votes. European voters will judge,” reacted on X (formerly Twitter), Pascal Canfin, the Renew president of the environment committee. “They are killing the whole Green Deal. Lobbying rather than health and the environment. Feeling of disgust,” said Manon Aubry (LFI).
The European right – the EPP -, which has been denouncing for months the costs imposed on households and businesses by the “green pact”, had multiplied the amendments to the point that many left-wing and environmentalist elected officials finally judged that it It was better to reject this much too watered-down text. For months, agricultural unions have been up in arms against this law on pesticides, previously carried by the former executive vice-president of the commission in charge of the climate, Frans Timmermans. “Let us not forget that this proposal was from the start ideological, without link to the realities of agriculture, proposing unrealistic transitions without the necessary financing! », Reacted on Wednesday Copa-Cogeca, which represents 22 million farmers in Europe.