European Landowners' Organization

ELO welcomes the opportunity to comment on the technical screening criteria of the EU Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act, as an effort to make it a more effective and accessible tool for boosting decarbonisation, the bioeconomy, and attracting investments for sustainable forest management.

The European Landowners Organization (ELO) welcomes the European Commissions initiative to simplify the regulatory framework governing organic production. Organic farming represents one important pathway towards sustainable agriculture in the European Union, contributing to environmental protection, biodiversity and soil health.

More than 40% of the historical building heritage in Europe is privately-owned. The European Historic Houses (EHH) and the European Landowner’s Organisation (ELO), which speak for millions of family-owned heritage houses all over Europe represent some of the potentially most endangered and fragile houses which could be impacted by the recently launched Commission’s Renovation Wave initiative.

The European Landowners Organization (ELO) welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the recently published Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directive 2008/98/EC on waste.

The European Commission recognises carbon removals as a crucial element in the fight against climate change and includes it in the climate law to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. The European Landowners Organization (ELO) supports this important first step in the process of creating a robust voluntary market for carbon removals, built on existing schemes, which could bring various benefits for landowners.

The European Landowners’ Organization (ELO) supports EU’s objective of climate neutrality by 2050, and encourages the EU to adopt measures addressing carbon emissions globally. Additional market mechanisms are necessary to decarbonise industries globally, while avoiding carbon leakage. We particularly encourage the EU to invest in greener industry, at home and abroad, as a part of the CBAM.

The European Landowners Organization (ELO) welcomes the publication of the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council on plants obtained by certain new genomic techniques and their food and feed, and amending Directives 68/193/EEC, 1999/105/EC, 2002/53/EC, 2002/55/EC, and Regulation (EU) 2017/625 ELO recognizes the potential of NGTs in offering precise and efficient breeding techniques…

Ecosystems are the “lungs” and backbone of our rural territories and landowners are custodians of this rich environment. The European Landowners’ Organization supports the European Commission’s aspiration to improve the health and resilience of European Ecosystems.

1/ Properly access the implementation of a new binding nature restoration target: Evaluating ecosystem services is a delicate exercise. ELO has itself launched a survey and research on the evaluation of cultural ecosystem services (currently undervalued) and we are fully implicated in the MAES working group with the European Commission. This leads ELO to think that a binding target would be premature.

The European Landowners Organization (ELO) welcomes the European Unions commitment to biodiversity protection, climate resilience and sustainable land management. However, the cumulative implementation of EU environmental legislation has increasingly exposed a widening disconnect between high-level policy ambitions and the operational realities faced by landowners, farmers, foresters and rural entrepreneurs.

Nature credits are emerging as a new voluntary market-based instrument to incentivize and reward nature-positive actions. At the heart of these credits lies the land, which supports essential ecosystem servicessuch as biodiversity, water retention, and carbon sequestrationthat must be preserved for nature credits to hold real value.

The ELO welcomes the revision of the Nitrated Directive to allow for the widespread use of Renure fertilisers. Revision of regulation to integrate research developments should be a basic approach to good legislation. This is also an important step to improve circularity and efficiency, reduce dependence on imported fertilisers and improve farm economics.

The European Landowners’ Organization (ELO) strongly supports the goals set by the EU and the Paris Agreement to combat climate change. We believe forestry and land use play a crucial role in this regard. Therefore, the ELO is alarmed by the LULUCF Regulation amendment proposal. In the proposal, the use of forest materials is limited: forests should grow as carbon sinks.

The ELO welcomes the aim of having high-quality and timely data, particularly in the face of climate change and the need to provide tools and information to landowners and land managers to prepare our forests for the future.

The European Landowners’ Organization (ELO) welcomes the initiative of the Commission to have an impact assessment of the proposal for a new legislation on EU Forest Observation Reporting and Data Collection to ensure a coordinated EU forest monitoring, data collection and reporting system. The latter is capital to complement the already existing inventory systems and planning policy.

ELO welcomes the Commissions mid-term evaluation and the opportunity to contribute with evidence gathered through direct consultations with farmers across Member States. This submission focuses on the practical effects of Regulation (EU) 2024/1468 and the broader simplification agenda on farm-level administrative burden. Please find enclosed the detailed feedback.

The ELO represents the collective voice of landowners, managers and farmers across Europe. Their business and private properties are the core for a sustainable and prosperous countryside. The ELO addresses issues that affect European rural areas, which represent over 82% of the EU's territory (48% farmland and 36% forest) and is home to around half its population (consisting of farming communities and other…

As a coordinator of several (preparatory) LIFE projects, the European Landowners Organization is thankful for the LIFE fund which makes change in the field possible and has proven to be of immense value for nature progress and our environment. Requirement to translate project outcomes into policy language The LIFE fund has the unique position to bridge the gap between the field and the policy level.