To: Hugo Motta, President of the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil
Strasbourg, 16 June 2025
Dear Mr Hugo Motta, President of the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil,
We write to you as Members of the European Parliament, in a spirit of friendship with Brazil and its people. We wish to express our sincere appreciation for the commitment demonstrated by the Brazilian government, and policymakers such as yourself, towards environmental protection and climate action We applaud Brazil’s leadership in these critical areas and how your country has been championing transformations and solutions, demonstrating that development and climate as well as environmental sustainability go hand in hand.
It has come to our attention that the General Environmental Licensing Bill, PL 2159/2021, was approved with modifications by the Senate on 21 May 2025 and is due to be voted on by your Chamber in the coming weeks. We are concerned to see such a tight timeline for this significant vote, especially in the light of numerous statements by UN experts, scientists, Indigenous Peoples and civil society highlighting the potential adverse consequences of the bill.
The revisions adopted modify and remove essential existing provisions concerning environmental protection in the environmental licensing process. According to UN experts, these changes risk causing serious1 negative impacts on human rights, “especially the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Quilombola communities”, as well as “serious and irreversible damages to the environment, aggravating the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and toxic pollution”.
Moreover, the bill permits projects with potential socio-environmental impacts to ‘self-license’ through online forms. According to the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB),2 the bill violates
1 Letter of 26 May 2025 from the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; UN Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises; UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change; UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 45/24, 53/3, 57/31, 55/2 and 51/19: https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=30004
2 Article of 20 May 2025 by APIB, https://apiboficial.org/2025/05/20/pl-devastacao/
Indigenous Peoples’ right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent guaranteed under international conventions, and creates “legal uncertainty for countless indigenous communities that traditionally occupy their lands”.
The bill also exempts certain agricultural activities from proper licensing, without any socioenvironmental impact assessments - a provision that could favour “predatory agribusiness” and could further drive deforestation in the Amazon and other ecosystems.3
As you are surely aware, the European Parliament is currently evaluating the ratification of the EUMercosur trade agreement. Should this bill be approved, it would significantly alter Brazil’s environmental protection framework, exacerbating existing concerns in Europe regarding the agreement’s potential impacts on the Amazon rainforest and other ecosystems.
We are deeply committed to ensuring that the EU and Brazil continue working together to advance a global agenda for sustainable development. Achieving this requires a shared, robust effort to ensure that environmental and social safeguards are upheld. In this spirit, we urge you to preserve the level of ambition of the legal framework of environmental licensing in Brazil, needed to adequately protect nature and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and we urge you to ensure a thorough process of consultation of experts, civil society and public before submitting this bill for a vote.
We would like to assure you of our commitment to working in close cooperation with Brazil towards ambitious environmental and climate goals at the upcoming COP30 in Belém - and beyond.
With our deepest regards,
Anna Cavazzini, Member of the European Parliament
Anja Hazekamp, Member of the European Parliament
Alexandra Geese, Member of the European Parliament
Carola Rackete, Member of the European Parliament
Cristina Guarda, Member of the European Parliament
Kira Marie Peter-Hansen, Member of the European Parliament
Lena Schilling, Member of the European Parliament
Lynn Boylan, Member of the European Parliament
Marie Toussaint, Member of the European Parliament
Michael Bloss, Member of the European Parliament
3 Technical briefing by the Observatorio do Clima of 16 May 2025: https://oc.eco.br/nota-tecnica-detalhadesmonte-do-licenciamento-ambiental-no-senado/
Rasmus Nordqvist, Member of the European Parliament
Rima Hassan, Member of the European Parliament
Sebastian Everding, Member of the European Parliament
Thomas Waitz, Member of the European Parliament
Villy Søvndal, Member of the European Parliament
Virginijus Sinkevičius, Member of the European Parliament