On Monday 22 April NGOs and businesses did a coordinated Twitterstorm for an hour to put pressure on the EU Member States, which at present won’t vote in favour of the proposal for a Nature Legislation Law. Only one of these Member States needs to change its position from abstaining or against to a vote in favour for the law to be adopted: Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Hungary.
A bizarre twist to the story is the Hungarian flip-flop from a positive to a negative position. This is why the law has not been adopted yet, even though an agreement was reached some weeks ago between the Council (the Member States) and the Parliament. Normally, such an agreement leads ‘automatically’ to the adoption of the law as everybody knows what the voting outcome will be.
When these agreements – in technical terms ‘trilogues’ – can’t be trusted any longer then a huge part of the EU legislative process is undermined. Are new legislative procedures needed? Time will tell.
