“In 20 or 30 years when I will talk to my two nieces and show them the beauty of our country and this continent, and they ask me ‘What did you do when everything was at stake?’ I want to to be able to tell them I did as much as I could,” Gewessler said before the meeting of environment ministers that saw a final agreement reached.
Of the more-than 50 European Union laws that have been passed since President Ursula von der Leyen first put forward the bloc’s green deal in 2019, none have been as controversial as the plan to re-wild a fifth of the continent’s land and sea.
The Nature Restoration Law was approved on Monday after Leonore Gewessler, Austria’s climate minister, defied Chancellor Karl Nehammer, her boss, to cast the deciding vote. It now requires the EU to return 20% of its habitats — from forests to wetlands — to good status by the end of the decade.
