The European Commission has instructed member states to bring all degraded ecosystems back to a healthy state by 2050. France’s answer — what does it look like? A national plan that introduces no new measures and no fresh funding.
There is broad agreement among scientists and international bodies that healthy ecosystems are one of the best defenses against global crises affecting water, food, health, biodiversity and the climate. In response, the European Union adopted, in 2024, a regulation aimed at nature restoration. Yet France’s response raises doubts. Although Paris says it endorses the objectives, the national plan it submitted to Brussels on 9 October 2026 — more than a month after the 1 September deadline — offers scant assurance that those targets will actually be met.
Brussels had asked member states to deliver their national restoration plans by 1 September 2026, specifying clear requirements: all degraded habitats must be restored by 2050, with one-third of the work completed by 2030. Other binding aims include halting the decline of pollinators and achieving a 10% rise in the abundance of farmland birds by 2030.
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Importantly, the Commission expected these national strategies to go beyond existing nature-protection policies: plans must include quantified targets and show the resources devoted to achieving them.
Reading France’s plan gives the impression that everything needed is already in place. The government text does not put forward any new initiatives. That complacency is striking given that there is little evidence of real improvement in the condition of French ecosystems. On the contrary, multiple policy decisions in recent years have weakened nature protection: agricultural laws that are detrimental to biodiversity, threats to the goal of zero net land artificialisation, and a loosening of species protection rules, among others.
“The plan simply pieces together existing public biodiversity policies. The lack of new measures up to 2030 is worrying, especially since current policies are already struggling to stop biodiversity decline,” warn five environmental NGOs — France Nature Environnement, the Société Nationale de Protection de la Nature, the Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux, Surfrider Foundation Europe and Humanité & Biodiversité — in a statement published on 14 October.
On agriculture, for example, the French government sets a target of restoring 4 million hectares through restoration measures by 2030, which represents 13.8% of the country’s agricultural area. The plan asserts that the target is essentially met by the objectives of the Agricultural Orientation Law. That law calls for 21% of utilized agricultural area (UAA) to be in organic farming by 2030 and for a net gain of 50,000 km of hedgerows. But the rhetoric appears optimistic: recent agricultural policies have, if anything, undermined hedgerows and made the path to greater organic acreage more difficult.
What about reversing the decline of pollinators and farmland birds? The French plan relies largely on reducing pesticide use through the Ecophyto 2030 initiative. Given the repeated disappointments of previous Ecophyto programmes, that dependence looks fragile.
The lack of novelty extends to financing. Estimated needs for implementing the plan are around 5 billion euros. Rather than identifying fresh public budgets, the document inventories existing public spending already directed to habitat protection and arrives at a preliminary estimate of some 3.1 billion euros already mobilised.
To fill the remaining gap, the plan suggests counting European funds and private financing. And if a shortfall persists, the government seeks to appeal to philanthropy: it proposes creating a national committee of biodiversity funders to be set up by the end of the year, hoping that the publication of the national plan will “create a pull” for private financing, according to the office of Monique Barbut, the Minister for Ecological Transition.
That argument did not convince the Comité national de la biodiversité, which issued a highly critical opinion on an earlier draft on 25 June. The committee noted that “the absence of new measures and of a coherent financial strategy weakens the whole plan and creates a mismatch between the ambition of the European regulation and the means available.”
Brussels’ feedback is expected by spring 2027, and France may well be asked to revise its proposal. If the Commission holds member states to the letter of the restoration regulation, Paris will likely have to present a revised plan that includes concrete, additional actions and clearer funding commitments to bridge the gap between ambition and implementation.
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Hi, I’m Ashley from the Decatur Metro team. I share essential information for a sustainable and responsible lifestyle.
