Birds and Habitats Directives Under Pressure
This week the European Commission’s public consultation on the “Stress test of Birds and Habitats Directives” has closed. In the middle of a global biodiversity crisis, all these nature laws need is strong implementation of existing legislation, specifically at national and local level, not time-consuming stress tests that undermine well-established rules and sow legal uncertainty.
The Birds and Habitats Directives are the core legal pillars of European Union biodiversity policy. They establish site protection rules through Natura 2000 and mandate strict legal protection for numerous rare and vulnerable species, including all cetaceans (whales and dolphins) across EU waters.
A stress test in the name of “simplification”
The open public and targeted consultation with Member States and stakeholders is part of the European Commission’s wider initiative on what it is euphemistically called “simplification, aiming to enhance EU competitiveness while safeguarding economic, social, and environmental goals”. The stress test asks whether the Birds and Habitats Directives remain fit to achieve their objectives in a cost-efficient way, including by identifying opportunities to reduce unnecessary administrative burden.
Yet the ambition of the Birds and the Habitats Directives is exactly what Europe needs today: to halt and ultimately restore European biodiversity through conservation and restoration measures.
Why Europe cannot afford to weaken these tools
The Commission already carried out a “Fitness Check” in 2016, which found that the Directives are “fit for purpose” and concluded that the conservation status of the protected species and habitats would be significantly worse in their absence. At the same time, it clearly identified the need for a substantial improvement in their implementation. No other instrument provides an equally legally binding and coherent framework, and they cannot be effectively replaced by simpler, voluntarily or fragmented national measures. Despite their proven effectiveness, the EU Commission has chosen to launch the stress test as part of its ongoing simplification efforts.
The limited implementation of the directives does not stem from the legal framework itself, but rather from shortcomings in national implementation efforts, such as limited funds that Member States allocate to their competent authorities to ensure transparent and effective implementation at national level. Decades of case law from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) as well as European Commission guidance provide authorities, developers and investors with a predictable, well-established basis for their decisions.
Reopening the legal text would risk undermining this clarity and reopen settled questions, creating the very uncertainty this exercise seeks to address. The framework is sound: what is needed is its effective implementation, properly resourced and enforced, not its revision.
EU main pillars to protect marine biodiversity: Natura 2000 network and strict protection regime
The Birds and Habitats Directives require Member States to designate and effectively manage Natura 2000 sites, which together form the world’s largest and most coherent network of protected areas. Member States must ensure that the habitats and species concerned reach and maintain a favourable conservation status, and must apply strict protection to threatened species, including all whales and dolphins.
In the marine environment, the Natura 2000 sites constitute the EU’s main contribution to achieving the objective of protecting 30% of its seas by 2030, and 10% under strict protection.
OceanCare’s contribution to the open public consultation
OceanCare therefore strongly urges the EU to keep the Birds and Habitats Directives intact and to strengthen their effectiveness through improved implementation at national and EU level, adequate resourcing of competent authorities and robust enforcement, rather than through legislative revision.
Moreover, OceanCare rejects the framing of the directives as a cost burden; the evidence points the other way. The huge benefits of conserving biodiversity largely outweigh necessary costs. The administrative requirements are essential for ensuring informed decision-making, legal clarity, and efficient execution to protect biodiversity effectively.
Furthermore, there is an additional dimension we believe deserves some meaningful consideration: Protecting the ocean and nature more broadly must go beyond an anthropocentric understanding that values ecosystems primarily for their benefits to humans. The ocean and the natural world possess intrinsic value, and their protection should be pursued not only because of the functions they provide, but also for their own sake and for the countless forms of life they sustain.
Further information
European Commission Stress test of Birds and Habitats Directives