Will the European Union law on the restoration of nature increase food prices and expropriate farmers? No, that's not true: The Nature Restoration Law, approved by the European Parliament on July 12, 2023, will only be applied after the fulfillment of necessary conditions such as guaranteeing long-term food security. It can be postponed if fundamental socio-economic consequences appear.
The claim appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) published by @milan_uhrik_republika on July 20, 2023, with the hashtags #hnutierepublika #milanuhrik #politika #politikanaslovensku. It began with the narration (translated from Slovak to English by Lead Stories staff):
The European Parliament approved the Green Deal law, which will significantly harm Slovak farmers. All politicians are silent. The green progressives prepared the law and covered it with a nice name -- a law for the restoration of nature. But, according to this regulation, farmers will have to leave part of the land uncultivated. Instead of producing food, they will have to grow weeds and thistles in the fields. This will lead to a reduction in the harvest and thus to a further increase in food prices.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Aug 28 07:27:11 2023 UTC)
The claim that food prices will increase or farmers will be expropriated has been spread by Milan Uhrik, member of the European Parliament and leader of the Slovak far-right party Republic. The Nature Restoration Law is based on the European Green Deal. It doesn't say there would be an obligation to create new protected areas in the EU, nor does it block new infrastructure for energy from renewable sources, as Uhrik claims in the TikTok video.
The Nature Restoration Law aims to prevent the collapse of ecosystems and to prevent the worst consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss. The European Commission emphasizes that the goals are to be achieved by the restoration of wetlands, rivers, forests, grasslands, marine ecosystems, urban environments and the species that live there, as well as by introduction of measures to prevent the penetration of chemical pesticides into food.
Around the Green Deal Agreement there are many already debunked misinformation or misleading interpretations.
