Mr. Niall Curley:

It is going to go to a co-decision. I will deal with the parliamentary aspect first. The proposal will be covered primarily by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety in the European Parliament. The rapporteurs have been appointed, and a report will be produced. The process is currently headed by César Luena, of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. The report will be published. I have heard recently that it is expected in January. Currently, there are other committees that are looking for the competence to have an opinion on this matter. Among them are the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, the Committee on Fisheries, and the Committee on Regional Development. The competences are divided up in the Conference of Committee Chairs, CCC. The CCC was held recently on 13 September, if memory serves me right, but a decision was not made due to conflict on the specific articles in respect of which each committee wanted to have competence. A meeting was held on Monday with regard to this specific area, again, on co-ordinators. As far as I am aware, no actual decision was made. So far, the competences have not been divided up and the rapporteurs have not been appointed for each of the other committees. It cannot be finished within the Parliament until all competences have been divided up and opinions made, and a common position from the Parliament is created. They are expecting that this can be done by summer but I would be very wary of that possibility. That is where we currently are on that.

On what the Commission actually expects overall for this law, it expects that it will be implemented in 2024. Then the plans will be put in place for 2026 after two years of actually writing and reviewing the plans, and they will be fully implemented by 2026-27. That is where that is. Apologies for going off on a tangent there.

Currently the Council is under the Czech Presidency. The Czechs have had six meetings within the working party on the environment on this matter, mainly to properly clarify certain issues within it. As I mentioned, there were a lot of issues with regard to definitions and the lack of clarity. As was remarked upon recently to me, the fact that there have been five meetings since July shows the sincere lack of clarity with this law and the amount that needs to be cleared up.

The Czechs are expecting to have the drafting process done in November. It is then expected to go to the Swedish Presidency. However, it will be moderately delayed under the Swedish Presidency due to the lack of will and the fact that it has a new government coming in. As Sweden has the largest area of peatlands in Europe, and this is completely about peatlands in certain respects, I doubt that they will be that fast with regard to getting it done. It will then go to the Spanish Presidency, which is in the second half of next year. However, the original plan was that by the summer of next year the Swedes would have created a common position within the Council and then it would go to trilogues under the Spanish Presidency. I do not see that happening in general, but that is the current trajectory and preliminary calendar.