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ClientEarth lawyers find European Parliament's vote on EU's agri-policy incompatible with the law

INSIGHT by ClientEarth

Published investESG on 2024-04-26
© Evi Radauscher
ClientEarth lawyers have called out the European Parliament after it voted through what they say is an illegal proposal to reform the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
According to ClientEarth, the revision of the CAP threatens the future of farming and jeopardises the EU’s ability to tackle the biodiversity and climate crises.
Prior to the European Parliament’s vote, the European Parliament's Legal Service was asked to assess the legality and compatibility of the measures to reform the CAP with existing laws. Despite the European Commission failing to conduct a climate assessment, which automatically puts the proposal in breach of EU law, the Legal Service refrained from reaching this conclusion. It argued that without a consistency assessment, it was unable to analyse the compatibility of the proposal with the EU’s climate objectives – a startling interpretation which casts doubt on the objectivity and impartiality of the Parliament’s lawyers.

“By voting to tear apart the CAP’s environmental foundation, the European Parliament has chosen to unravel a policy that is supposed to serve farmers, people and the environment. Now, the CAP will do even less to support farmers. How can we secure their future and our ability to feed ourselves if we remove protections for nature, the very thing we depend on to be able to do so.

“What’s outrageous from a legal perspective is the blatant incompatibility of the revision with the CAP’s own rules, as well as other EU laws – like the European Climate Law. Any law student would be able to tell you that the mere fact that the European Commission failed to carry out a consistency assessment with the Climate Law is in itself illegal. How the Legal Service has failed to call this out is not clear and frankly alarming to us.”

-Sarah Martin, ClientEarth lawyer

As a civil society organisation, ClientEarth is unable to challenge the CAP’s revision directly. However, ClientEarth can bring a complaint to the EU Ombudsman, asking it to call the European Commission out on failing to respect peoples’ rights to information and to participation in the decision-making process when preparing the proposal.

“As lawyers, we cannot stand by and let decision-makers unpick our democracy just to secure votes for the upcoming EU elections. This proposal has been put forward despite a total lack of transparency, public consultation, without an impact assessment, and against scientific evidence from authoritative EU and international bodies.

“We intend to take action and bring a complaint to the EU Ombudsman – this wrong should never be repeated.”

-Sarah Martin, ClientEarth lawyer

All opinions expressed are those of the author and/or quoted sources. investESG.eu is an independent and neutral platform dedicated to generating debate around ESG investing topics.
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