(Updates with reactions)

The European Parliament’s environment committee (ENVI) narrowly defeated a move to fully reject the highly disputed nature restoration bill on Thursday, but its full position is yet to be established because the voting process was suspended after several hours due to a lack of time.

The bill would set binding targets to restore degraded habitats and lost species covering at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030, but it has been fiercely contested by conservative politicians who fear it would threaten food security.

Several cross-party parliamentary committees have already rejected the bill outright in interim votes, but ENVI prevented a similar move today by the narrowest possible margin in a tied ballot of 44 votes to 44 as the legislation divided MEPs across both party and national lines.

That meant the ENVI members then voted on the mammoth bill line-by-line, going through over 1,000 closely-contested amendments in more than three hours when chair Pascal Canfin was forced to halt the process before the final confirmation vote could be cast.

The ENVI session was being held in Strasbourg alongside a plenary sitting of the full 705-strong parliament, with the ENVI voting overrunning its scheduled time due to continual recounts.

The process eventually had to be halted after to ensure the 88 ENVI MEPs could join their colleagues for voting on other issues in the full assembly.

The ENVI vote will resume on June 27 in Brussels, the committee’s press service announced on Twitter, with a spokesperson confirming to Carbon Pulse that the MEPs won’t vote again on what was already agreed in today’s session.

“Around 20 pages of 225 are left,” the spokesperson added.

“Ugly politics has left its mark on the law,” according to Kelsey Perlman, campaigner at forests and rights NGO Fern,

“We are only mid-way through a knife-edge vote on the Nature Restoration Law, and it’s clear that the outcome for Europe’s forests is terrible,” she told Carbon Pulse.

With Thursday’s partial vote, the overall target to restore ecosystems moved from 30% to 10%, which would largely exclude forests, Perlman noted.

“We got through about 80% [of the amendments], so the biggest elements are known,” she explained. “The voting list won’t change between now and the 27th but I’m sure there will be many discussions to ensure there is a majority to adopt all these changes, or the opposite”.

Gemma Cranston, executive director of investment and advisory firm Pollination noted that the shrill criticism of the bill by the centre-right EPP political group had stirred up some unjustified worries.

“There are legitimate concerns at play but the EPP’s claims that biodiversity laws will cause harm will have prompted fears amongst farming, fishing and indigenous communities”.

“Instead of fearmongering, we need to get better at articulating how new policies and desired practices will be equitable and just, so that people want to be part of this transition,” she said.

For Climate Action Network Europe, the law is “not dead, but severely wounded”.

“We urge particularly the members of the EPP group and individuals from the Renew Europe party to reevaluate their approach and support nature restoration,” said climate and land use policy officer Erich de Castro Dias.

Once ENVI’s position has been fully established, that outcome and any additional amendments will be put to a vote of the full Parliament to determine the assembly’s stance.

The Parliament and the Council of member states are scrutinising the bill in parallel, eventually needing to reconcile a final position with the European Commission over the coming months.

EU environment ministers will meet to try to agree on a Council position on Tuesday (June 20).

By Emanuela Barbiroglio  – emanuela@carbon-pulse.com