European Green Deal: Out with a bang or with a bust?

With EU elections looming next summer, Brussels had hoped to end its five-year marathon of unprecedented environmental legislation with a final sprint.

Instead, it’s looking more and more like the crowd is getting restless and the exhausted runner’s legs are turning to jelly within sight of the finish line.

On Wednesday, the European Commission is due to publish a package of food and biodiversity rules as part of its flagship Green Deal agenda, in one of its last legislative pushes before the end of the year.

The various proposals aim to curb soil degradation and food and textile waste, while enabling the development of a new generation of agricultural crops better suited to a changing climate.

But they come amid growing pushback from the political right that threatens to derail other related measures, including the EU nature restoration law and pesticide reduction targets, which are shaping to become a wedge issue when voters elect a new European Parliament next June.

Manfred Weber, leader of the Parliament’s largest group, the center-right European People’s Party, has vowed to kill any EU law that he says will lead to higher food prices while threatening farmers’ livelihoods and global food supplies as the war in Ukraine rages.

Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission has racked up some important wins in executing its green agenda, banning imports linked to global deforestation, adopting targets to slash greenhouse gas emissions, phasing out the sale of new combustion engine cars by 2035 and unleashing a wave of investment in renewable energy.

But, with time running out to complete all the legislative initiatives under the Green Deal before its mandate expires, many in the Brussels bubble wonder whether the EU executive will compromise and opt for weaker proposals.

Can of worms

At least one of this week’s files — on soil health — may have already fallen victim to the backlash.

Soil is essential for the production of food. It also purifies water, protects against flooding and helps combat drought.

"Without healthy soils, we won’t be able to grow food and we won’t have clean drinking water, it’s as simple as that," said Swiss soil expert Madlene Nussbaum, who works at the University of Bern. "Europe is rich enough that we can always import food from somewhere else — but you can’t easily import water."

Most of the EU’s soils are in poor condition, suffering from erosion, excessive nutrient inputs and other problems. Soil degradation costs member states more than €50 billion a year, according to the European Environment Agency.

The new legislation would give soil a legal status similar to that of air and water, with the goal of dramatically improving soil conditions by 2050. But it also touches on the thorny issues of land ownership and land use.

The Commission proposed a similar soil directive in 2006, but agricultural powerhouses such as the U.K., France, Germany and the Netherlands blocked it, forcing its eventual withdrawal in 2014.

Now, with EU environment chiefs Virginijus Sinkevičius and Frans Timmermans poised to reopen the can of worms, environmental groups have urged them not to give in to pressure.

“The EU must adopt the soil health law without delay,” said Caroline Heinzel, associate policy officer at the European Environmental Bureau.

But not at any cost, she added: “The law must be ambitious and well designed.”

Heinzel cited legally binding targets and an application of the polluter-pays principle as some of the elements necessary to achieve the law’s goals.

A leaked draft contains neither.​​

Cakeism

But while environmental advocacy groups are pushing for greater ambition in some areas of the Green Deal, they are not in favor of all its elements.

In particular, the groups are critical of Brussels’ decision to regulate a new generation of gene-edited crops differently from classic genetically modified organisms (GMOs), warning that this will increase corporate capture of the agricultural sector and threaten non-GM and organic production. The draft suggests the Commission plans to scrap risk assessment and traceability requirements for at least some of the crops.

Another file expected this week, on regulating what kind of seeds can be traded and sold within the EU, could criminalize the work of small farmers and conservation networks that preserve and exchange traditional varieties, the groups say.

In both files, environmentalists accuse the Commission of siding too much with Big Agri interests.

"You can’t have your cake and eat it too," said a senior EU official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. "Environmental groups always say that some of our proposals aren’t ambitious enough, or that we’ve been too industry-friendly in others."