She expects in the trilogue negotiations with the European Commission and European Parliament to be able to rid the already watered-down deterioration ban of ‘further juridification of nature policy’.
Van der Wal said Tuesday afternoon in Luxembourg, after the EU Environment Council, that the European Commission has already made many concessions, but that she would have preferred the EU Council President Sweden to have taken the proposal off the agenda.
However, a qualified majority of (large) EU countries considers the proposal mature enough for a final round of negotiations with the European Parliament, without putting it to a definitive vote yet.
Van der Wal reiterated that she supports the main objective of nature restoration because the Netherlands has something to catch up on from the past twenty, thirty years. She did not want to vote against the proposal and would have abstained if necessary.
When asked whether she would now urge her Dutch VVD party colleagues in the European Parliament to support it, she said she expects to talk with many EU politicians in the coming weeks about parts of the proposal.
The chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee, the Frenchman Pascal Canfin, called the ministers’ decision to support the proposal a boost for his committee, which must adopt a position next week (June 27). Last week the vote was tied: 44 against 44.
Minister Van der Wal expressed satisfaction that the EU Commissioners are softening the ‘result obligation’ from a ‘result obligation’ to a ‘best-effort obligation.’ The EU Commissioners also want to prevent a looming construction obstruction; therefore, individual member states will receive more control over what will or will not be allowed.
But Van der Wal still has objections to such a ‘project-by-project approach.’ In a small densely populated country with many Natura 2000 sites and nature areas, she still fears ‘all kinds of permit hassles, procedures and juridification of nature.’
Without going into detail, she said that individual countries should not only have the space to partly decide on the content (of nature policy) themselves but also on how that should be organized (differently per country). She said she will try to achieve this together with some like-minded countries, such as Belgium, Finland and Malta.