Thunberg against farmers’ lobby: back to nature by hook or by crook?

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Thunberg’s moral support should prevent a heart of the EU Commission’s “Green Deal” from failing in Parliament. After weeks of heated debates, the Commission’s plan for a “law for the restoration of nature” was put to the vote. If he had failed, von der Leyen would have had to worry about restoring his own ability to act in environmental policy.

A year before the European elections, the parliament saved von der Leyen from a sensitive loss of face – which their own people, the conservatives of the European People’s Party (EPP), wanted to thread. In line with the farmers’ lobby, they had warned against exaggerated environmental protection measures that could reduce food supplies and raise prices.

Brussels bubble against rural area

There were many other arguments against this, above all the preservation of biodiversity and the poor condition of soil, forests and rivers in Europe – and numerous experts and associations did the same. But those mainly affected by the renaturation law see themselves as an endangered species. CDU MEP Peter Liese observed: “I have rarely seen positions diverge so widely in the rural region that I represent and in the Brussels and Strasbourg bubbles as in this law.”

Not only the mayors, district administrators, forest owners and farmers cited by Liese should have been alarmed by the legislative plans. But also all consumers who have had the feeling for a long time that they are increasingly being asked to make sacrifices for environmental and climate protection, which the authors of such plans pay out of petty cash, while they pose a threat to the existence of normal earners.

New Ammo for Greed Inflation?

Such tendencies characterized the agitated German dispute over “Habecks Heizhammer”, the dismay of homeowners at the commission plans for forced energy renovations, as well as the peasant protests against soil and groundwater protection requirements in the Netherlands, which gave rise to a new angry citizen movement there.

While inflation, which has still not been brought under control, is largely fueled by an explosion in food prices, the possibility of a fresh boost in the cost of living in the service of nature conservation is now a concern. Even the debate about this could provide the enrichment strategists of “greed inflation” with new pretexts for price increases.

Populism allegations against CSU man Weber

There is no doubt that it is right to renaturate drained moors, to preserve inner-city green spaces, to reforest forests and to give priority to the preservation of natural areas in general. But it is also true that this will not come for free. And that urban and political elites, with their plans to save nature, encounter strong reservations from those who live in and from nature.

Those who do not ignore such sensitivities are quickly accused of fishing in the murky waters of the populists. That’s what happened to Manfred Weber, leader of the conservative European People’s Party in the European Parliament. According to the Left, Greens and Socialists, the CSU man made common cause with right-wing forces in the style of a disinformation campaign – possibly to wipe out Ursula von der Leyen.

Story time in the plenum

In fact, Weber still has a score to settle with the President. He won the 2019 European elections as the top conservative candidate – not von der Leyen, who didn’t even run. At the time, French President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel conjured up the Federal Minister of Defense as an alternative to Weber, whom the Frenchman absolutely did not want to see head of the EU Commission.

How much of this continues to have an effect on Weber is difficult to fathom. In any case, he suffered a smack in Parliament. What the SPD MP Tiemo Wölken said in the plenary session of Parliament about the heated disputes that led to this can be said with some certainty: “A lot of fairy tales are being told in this debate.”