N. Peter Kramer’s Weekly Column
‘Today’s vote marks the clear end of the Timmermans era and its forest monitoring law’, stated MEP Stefan Köhler (EPP) in the European Parliament’s Committee for Environment, ‘Forests are a national competence and we reminded the European Commission of this fact’.
The European People’s Party together with right groups in the EP rejected a compromise on the forest monitoring law.
The EPP, pointing at the national competence, asked the Commission for targeted support for existing structures and strengthening member states in their efforts to protect forests instead of more paperwork for the member states .
‘The proposed framework would impose an unnecessary additional burden on countries that are already doing a good job at protecting their forests’, said another EPP MEP, Alexander Bernhüber, in the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development. ‘Ursula von der Leyen declared 25 percent less bureaucracy. The Commission should therefore recall 100 percent of this law’.
The Socialists (S&D Group) strongly opposed the move and are discovering a trend. In a press release they let know that ’this is not an isolated case. The EPP is systematically undermining the EU’s Green Deal’.
Indeed. That is exactly what Köhler said: ‘Today’s vote marks the clear end of the Timmermans era’.
