France must identify in its national restoration plan the surfaces to be restored according to habitat categories in the European regulation, without a fixed French target for agricultural land withdrawal. The commitment and deadline are real, but existing fiscal and financial levers are insufficient or poorly incentivizing. This gap reveals a tension that extends beyond France: Europe sets ambitious ecological objectives and leaves the choice of instruments to Member States, which must describe their measures in their national plan, without creating a dedicated European financing mechanism on its own.

The essentials

  • The Nature Restoration Regulation aims at the EU level for restoration measures covering at least 20% of land and 20% of marine areas by 2030. France aims for at least 30% of terrestrial and marine territory under protection by 2030, of which 10% under strict protection.
  • National land compensation mechanisms to support agricultural use changes linked to restoration remain fragmented and uncoordinated.
  • The Regulation sets objectives and leaves the choice of instruments to Member States, which must describe their measures in their national plan, without imposing a single instrument.
  • All European countries with a strong agricultural tradition will have to reconcile nature restoration with maintaining food production, by determining who bears the costs.
  • Experimental payment for ecosystem services (PES) and biodiversity credit mechanisms exist; their long-term sustainability and scaling-up remain ongoing, without official single demonstration of overall underfunding.

An unprecedented commitment in French land history

France has 18 million hectares of cultivated agricultural land. Committing to restore degraded ecosystems poses a land problem of significant scale, comparable in scope to major historical land reorganizations. At that time, the State wanted to gain land for agriculture. The objective was clear, tools existed, and political direction was univocal. Today, direction reverses.

The European Nature Restoration Regulation experienced a very narrow parliamentary vote in July 2023 and was formally adopted by the Council on June 17, 2024. It aims at the Union level for restoration measures covering at least 20% of land and seas by 2030. Each Member State must prepare a national plan contributing to this global objective. France aims for 30% of terrestrial and marine protected areas by 2030, which is distinct from the obligations of the Nature Restoration Regulation. A strong political signal.

But the transition from declarations to action hits a simple reality: withdrawing hectares from production can reduce revenues and productive capacity, unless compensation, change of economic model, or public or private support occurs, in a country that remains one of Europe’s leading agricultural producers.

This blocking point is identified by available work on restoration planning as a significant issue. Restoring degraded agricultural ecosystems—drained wetlands, torn-out hedgerows, plowed prairies, fragmented bocages—may require modifying agricultural practices or uses on certain surfaces. This is first and foremost a question of rights, revenues, and equity.

The legal void at the center of the system

The European Regulation sets objectives and leaves the choice of instruments to Member States, creating implementation challenges in countries with a strong agricultural tradition.

Withdrawal or modification of agricultural use does not equate to expropriation unless it is part of a legal expropriation procedure, which assumes formally established public utility. The State can purchase land, but available public budgets appear insufficient against the objectives. The Agency for Services and Payment (ASP) manages agri-environmental and climate contracts (MAEC) that remunerate certain practices favorable to biodiversity, but these mechanisms are designed to modify practices on land remaining in production, not to finance sustainable exit from production.

Current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) financing for biodiversity and ecosystem restoration is fragmented. The second pillar of the CAP, which funds rural development and agro-environmental measures, absorbs less than 25% of total European agricultural budget. Credits dedicated to restoration in this pillar remain limited and fragmented.

The absence of a dedicated European land compensation mechanism contrasts with the financing requirements of restoration objectives. Several agricultural organizations and farmer defense groups converge on one point: you cannot ask operators to reduce their working tool without offering them a viable economic alternative. This rare convergence should alert policymakers to the political fragility of the system.

Restoration in practice on the ground

Behind the figures, there are precise geographical realities. Priority areas for restoration in France are known: wetlands in the West (Poitevin marshes, Breton marshes), permanent grasslands of the Massif Central, damaged Norman and Breton bocages, peatlands in the Northeast, depleted riparian forests along major rivers. These environments have established ecological value—water regulation, carbon sequestration, wildlife corridors—but they are also, for the most part, lands exploited for decades.

Restoring a drained wetland takes time. According to available sources, return to satisfactory ecological functioning of a wetland meadow after reopening can take several years depending on pedological conditions. This means that a farmer who agrees today to restore will not see ecological benefits before 2030, an intermediate deadline for French restoration objectives. Calendar and biology do not align.

Local project proponents—environmental protection associations, local authorities, natural reserve managers—develop contractual approaches with farmers. Natura 2000-type contracts or compensatory measures linked to infrastructure projects constitute voluntary management and restoration mechanisms at the scale of affected sites and plots. But these mechanisms can be territorialized and heterogeneous, while resources mobilized to cover transition to less productive uses remain fragmented and limited.

The existing options, and why they are not yet sufficient

The toolkit of potential instruments is not empty. It is simply insufficiently deployed.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) represent the most promising option. The principle is simple: remunerate a farmer or landowner for benefits that their practices generate for society—clean water, carbon storage, biodiversity maintenance. France has experimented with these mechanisms for about a decade, notably through water agency programs, which remunerate practices favorable to groundwater quality in certain watersheds. Results are encouraging where payments reach a level sufficient to cover agricultural opportunity costs. The problem is scaling: generalizing PES on a large scale requires significant public resources, insufficiently mobilized by current mechanisms.

Voluntary biodiversity markets represent another option. Companies subject to environmental compensation obligations, under the 2016 biodiversity law and the avoid-reduce-compensate sequence, purchase compensation units from operators restoring natural environments. This mechanism generates private financing for restoration, but its volume remains modest and its geographic scope limited. It could increase in scale if the European regulation on corporate sustainability reporting (CSRD) integrated stronger biodiversity compensation obligations. The European Commission opened this avenue without concretizing it.

Negotiation of the CAP and European budget for 2028-2034 is an important deadline for future agricultural and environmental financing. An effective strengthening of environmental financing in the CAP could reduce the financing deficit, subject to final budget and agricultural policy agreement. IDDRI advocates for significant reorientation of agricultural subsidies toward conditional payments for providing ecosystem services, rather than area-based aid that mechanically benefits largest farms without environmental conditions. This approach requires fine measurement and monitoring work, but tools exist—remote sensing, floristic inventories, pollinator monitoring—and their cost has decreased considerably.

Financing restoration in Europe without arbitrating against food production

France is not alone facing this equation. Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain confront variants of the same problem: ambitious European ecological objectives in countries with strong agricultural tradition and land structure inherited from centuries of use.

The central question for the 2030-2035 horizon is whether a general compensation model emerges, or whether each State improvises a national response lacking a common framework.

Three scenarios are emerging, without it being possible to say today which will prevail.

In the first, the 2028-2034 CAP proposal provides for reorganizing environmental tools between mandatory requirements and voluntary incentives. Member States must provide financing for their restoration plans and can mobilize various public or private funds, without automatic compensation rights for each farmer. This scenario requires a political majority in the European Parliament favorable to deep agricultural policy reform, a fragile majority, as shown by the very narrow parliamentary vote in July 2023 on the Nature Restoration Regulation.

In the second scenario, Member States develop complementary national instruments: sovereign restoration funds, green bonds earmarked for biodiversity, expanded competencies of water agencies for land financing. France has institutional capacity to build this type of mechanism; its water agencies, public land establishments, and the Coastal Conservancy have genuine expertise. But this requires budgetary decisions under severe fiscal constraint, and assumes political will to maintain biodiversity among competing priorities.

In the third scenario, ecological objectives remain formally in force but implementation is deferred to non-binding voluntary commitments. This is the risk of soft political compromise: figures appear in national reports, but ecosystems continue degrading. This scenario would entail long-term costs linked to lost ecosystem services. Lost ecosystem services—flood regulation, pollination, natural water purification—end up being compensated by gray infrastructure (dikes, treatment plants, insecticides) whose public cost is well documented.

The food question runs through all three scenarios. Restoring degraded ecosystems does not necessarily mean proportional reduction in total agricultural production. Certain low-agronomic-potential lands present increased abandonment risk, but ecological degradation and agronomic yield do not systematically overlap. Restoration could prioritarily target certain lower-yield surfaces, preserving core productive surfaces. But this prioritization requires fine cartographic and agronomic work, territory by territory, which the National Restoration Plan is still in initial stages according to available recommendations.

Import dependence is the counterargument systematically advanced by opponents of forced restoration. If France produces less, it will import more, often from countries where environmental standards are lower. The argument has partial validity: it depends on demand elasticity, production systems’ capacity to increase efficiency on remaining surfaces, and dietary evolution. IDDRI projections on sustainable food systems suggest that reduced animal production can free up surfaces according to scenarios; much of French cereal land feeds intensive livestock, but its effects on food security depend on diets, substitute productions, trade, and implemented policies. This lever, as much political as agronomic, is currently absent from restoration debate.

Signals indicating whether the trajectory holds

A few indicators will allow, by 2027-2028, to see whether France takes a credible direction.

The first is publication of France’s National Nature Restoration Plan, which France must submit to the European Commission. The quality of this plan, its geographical precision, financial quantification, compensation mechanisms, will say much about real political will.

The second is the outcome of post-2027 CAP negotiations. If the share of budget allocated to agro-environmental measures increases significantly, the financing problem becomes more manageable. If it stagnates or declines, Member States will need to find national margins in already-stretched budgets.

The third is the evolution of France’s voluntary biodiversity market. Private operators, Caisse des Dépôts, green finance actors, agricultural land companies, are beginning to invest in restoration to valorize biodiversity credits. If this market gains scale and regulates properly, it can mobilize significant private capital without awaiting public budgetary decisions.

What is at stake here transcends France. The European Nature Restoration Regulation is the first legally binding instrument to set quantified restoration objectives at continental scale. Its success or failure will set precedent for global environmental governance. If Europe demonstrates that restoring ecosystems at large scale is possible in advanced economies with dense agricultural structure, it exports a model. If it abandons its objectives facing political pressure, it invalidates the very idea that ambitious ecological regulation can be upheld.

France, the EU’s leading agricultural country by area, is the central test.

Sources

  1. IUCN France, Recommendations for National Restoration Planning, March 2026
  2. IDDRI, Biodiversity Restoration in France (Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations)
  3. Biodiversity.gouv.fr, National Plan for Nature Restoration
  4. European Commission, Nature Restoration Regulation (Nature Restoration Law, EU Regulation 2024/1991)