The Commission will stress-test the Birds and Habitats Directives in 2026 “taking into account climate change, food security, and other developments and present a series of guidelines to facilitate implementation,” it said.
Critiques roll in
Some industry groups, like the Computer & Communications Industry Association, have welcomed the changes, calling it a “a common-sense fix.”
German center-right MEP Pieter Liese also welcomed the omnibus package, saying, “[W]e need to streamline environmental laws precisely because we want to preserve them. Bureaucracy and paperwork are not environmental protection.”
But environmental groups opposed the rollbacks.
“The Von der Leyen Commission is dismantling decades of hard-won nature protections, putting air, water, and public health at risk in the name of competitiveness,” WWF said in a statement.
The estimated savings “come with no impact assessment and focus only on reduced compliance costs, ignoring the far larger price of pollution, ecosystem decline, and climate-related disasters,” it added.
The Industrial Emissions Directive, which entered into force last year and is already being transposed by member countries, was “already much weaker than what the European Commission had originally proposed” during the last revision, pointed out ClientEarth lawyer Selin Esen.
“The Birds and Habitats Directives are the backbone of nature protection in Europe,” said BirdLife Europe’s Sofie Ruysschaert. “Undermining them now would not only wipe out decades of hard-won progress but also push the EU toward a future where ecosystems and the communities that rely on them are left dangerously exposed.”