Brussels, my love? EU forest law on hold: tragedy or relief?

This week, we are joined by three MEPs: the Netherlands’ Sander Smit, from the Farmer-Citizen Movement in the European People’s Party, German Green Anna Cavazzini, and Sweden’s Emma Wiesner, with Renew Europe.

The panel react to a European Commission decision to delay implementing the EU Deforestation Regulation – a key part of the bloc’s Green Deal that was meant to take effect in December.

Under the law, traders doing business in the EU would have to prove that products from coffee to furniture aren’t from deforested land.

Anna Cavazzini called the postponement a tragedy.

“We are in a global crisis of deforestation at the moment. Forest fires are destroying the Amazon, destroying animals, destroying livelihoods of indigenous people and we all know that we need the forests for our future”, she said.

But her counterpart from Sweden said policymakers needed to be realistic.

“I had big problems when this rule was regulated in the first place, simply because we put too much legal action into guidelines put by the Commission”, said Emma Wiesner, who voted against the law.

The panel also discussed Viktor Orbán’s visit to Strasbourg this week. As rotating head of the EU Council, the Hungarian Prime Minister was invited to set out his vision for the EU. He told MEPs he would drink champagne if Donald Trump won the US elections. Some lawmakers played Candy Crush to express their disdain while others branded him a dictator.

It was a confrontational intervention, Sander Smit said.

The debacle “was not a good day for the reputation of our institution and institutions in general. I think because we saw the radical left and the radical right creating disturbances, shouting, singing”, he said.

Watch ‘Brussels, my love?’ in the player above.