Members of European parliament have called on Jean-Claude Juncker to offer reassurances that EU environmental policy is not being downsized, before they consider approving Juncker’s Maltese environment commissioner-designate Karmenu Vella.

“The biggest problem might not be Mr Vella as a person but his assignment, and that signals a bigger problem – that environmental policies are being downgraded across the entire commission,” Bas Eickhout, a Green member of the parliament’s environment committee’s coordinating group, told the Guardian.

It is unclear what will happen if Juncker does not respond. The issue could be as much a shot across the EU president’s bows ahead of Tuesday’s parliamentary hearings for the nominee climate and energy commissioner, Miguel Arias Canete, as a serious threat to block Vella.



Before giving Vella a pass, MEPs on the group say they want full implementation of the EU’s last environmental action plan, including sidelined tranches covering access to justice, endocrine disruptors and environmental inspections of illegally logged timber.

They are also calling for a guarantee that Vella’s boss-to-be, the former Finnish prime minister Jyrki Katainen, has ‘sustainable development’ added to his ‘jobs, growth and competitiveness’ nomenclature.

“We would require this from Juncker before the plenary vote as a clear condition,” Eickhout said.

Juncker sees no need for Katainen, a centre-right nominee vice-president, to have a ‘sustainable development’ moniker, arguing that the concept is intrinsic to EU treaties and existing policy.

But the MEPs’ call reflects fears that a shift is underway in EU environment policy towards a deregulation agenda, exemplified by a mission letter to Vella from Juncker calling for a review of freshly-minted flagship policies on air pollution and recycling targets.

These are slated to establish a national emissions ceiling directive for six toxic pollutants, and set 70% municipal waste recycling and 80% packaging recycling targets for 2030.

In the six-page missive, Juncker calls on the Maltese social democrat to “overhaul the existing environmental legislative framework to make it fit for purpose.”

The document “breathes deregulation,” Eickhout said.

One particular passage that has set alarm bells ringing for conservationists asks Vella to “carry out an in-depth evaluation of the Birds and Habitats directives and assess the potential for merging them into a more modern piece of legislation.”

Vella was the tourism minister in a Maltese government which violated EU law by allowing recreational spring bird hunting, and his appointment seemed provocative to many environmentalists.

“Malta probably has the most problematic [national] track record in Europe,” Ariel Brunner, Birdlife International’s head of EU policy said. “They’ve just issued a derogation to allow trapping of finches. In terms of unlawful derogations to the birds directive to allow shooting and trapping of birds, it is among the worst – if not the worst – of EU states.”

Campaigners accuse Malta’s Labour administration of encouraging a slaughter of migratory bird life such as quails, song thrushes and brood eagles, for sport, as they migrate over the Mediterranean island.

In the parliamentary hearing, a grey-tied Vella sat beneath seven functionaries and a digital clock counting out his two minute answers, often read from notes, in an airless 400-seater conference room.

He said that his tourism ministry had been concerned with the bird cull: “I remember every morning going into the office, I had two trays – one for general correspondence, the other for complaints about birds. The letters I used to get, especially from the UK – our number one tourism market – said ‘Mr Vella, your country is very beautiful. We enjoyed our holiday but we will not be coming back because we met hunters ...’ My portfolio totally depended on the environment and when you talk about the lack of controls, you are preaching to the converted. I will not defend anyone with regards to breaking any directives.”

MEPs and environmentalists queried why he had not spoken out about this before. “During his time as tourism minister in the government, he did nothing to publicly protest that as far as we know,” Brunner said.

While Vella’s performance was criticised by conservationists as insipid and vague, it was also replete with modish buzzwords – green growth, blue growth, natural capital, sustainable economy – and may yet have won him enough credit for a Brussels fudge to defuse the stand-off.

Despite the coordinating groups’ protest letter, a centrist ‘gentleman’s agreement’ between conservative and social democrat blocs not to oppose each others’ candidates could prevent the deadline to Juncker from turning into an ultimatum.

“He has got a lot of work to do but he said a lot of the right things,” Catherine Bearder, a Liberal Democrat MEP told the Guardian. “He said he would ensure that the birds directive remains in force and I will be watching him like a hawk to make sure that it does.”

• This article was amended on 2 October 2014 to correct a boughs/bows homophone, and also because an earlier version referred to Malta as a county, rather than country.

