On Friday 8th September on the eve of the LULUCF vote in Strasbourg, scheduled for Wednesday 13th September, a section of the European People's Party (EPP) in the European Parliament forced their group to table a wrecking amendment designed to eviscerate the carefully crafted compromise that the Environment Committee had adopted in July 2017.

 

Commenting on this depressing turn of events Paul Brannen MEP, Shadow Rapporteur for S&D on LULUCF, commented as follows:

 

“It has been extremely disappointing to see the EPP cave in on the existing progressive climate change position on LULUCF that was adopted by the Environment Committee back in June.

 

“The narrow minded view that puts perceived national interest ahead of the wider need for ambitious EU climate action to deliver the Paris Agreement has seemingly won the argument inside the EPP.

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“The children and youth of Europe won't thank the Parliament for ducking this opportunity to establish an accounting system that enables us to accurately compare and contrast future levels of forest use - intensity - with how we used our forests in the past. Worse still other countries in Asia and South America may adopt this flawed EU approach, if it is voted for by the Parliament on Wednesday 13th September and may manipulate it to hide unsustainable levels of future tree felling.

“Those in the EPP that have conspired to undermine the work of their own Rapporteur Norbert Lins MEP, whose original LULUCF proposal was acceptable to the Environment Committee, should be ashamed of themselves.

 

“These EPP conspirators, having intellectually and morally lost the argument on their flawed proposal to have a forest reference level set in the future not the past, have returned on the eve of the vote on LULUCF in the full Strasbourg Parliament with a wrecking amendment, the sole purpose of which is to removes the heart from the Commission's proposal to have a robust forest accounting system. Let us be in no doubt if this EPP amendment is passed and the word ‘intensity’ is removed from the LULUCF legislation then the Commission proposal will have been effectively gutted of any meaningful purpose and a significant opportunity to ensure climate change is tackled will have been destroyed.

“I will not stand by and allow this to happen without a fight. Even now, current weather events are showing us that climate change is too big a threat to all of us for narrow national interest to be allowed to trump the EU’s commitment to delivering the Paris UN Climate Change deal.”