Bavarian CSU ministers accuse Manfred Weber of inaction on EU nature and deforestation laws

A letter heavy with complaint

Two Bavarian CSU cabinet members, agriculture minister Michaela Kaniber and European affairs minister Eric Beißwenger, have sent a critical letter to Manfred Weber, the party's vice-chairman and leader of the EPP group in the European Parliament. The letter, dated 21 July 2026, accuses Weber of failing to protect the interests of Bavarian farmers and forest owners against two EU regulations: the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) and the Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Kaniber and Beißwenger warn that the rules hang over the state like a sword of Damocles and will cause property encroachments, excessive bureaucracy, and a shortage of building land.

Like a sword of Damocles, these two unholy regulations hang over our centuries-old Bavarian homeland.

The contested regulations

Both regulations have long been a sore point for agricultural and forestry lobbies in Bavaria. The Nature Restoration Law requires member states to restore ecosystems, including through compensation areas that the ministers say will push up costs for new building land. The EUDR imposes due diligence on commodity supply chains to fight global deforestation, but critics in Bavaria argue it imposes impractical red tape on family farms and timber producers. The ministers' letter warns of "massive encroachments on property" and procedures detached from reality.

A personal dig at Weber

Kaniber and Beißwenger directly echo the language Manfred Weber used in his controversial Pentecost letter, which many inside the CSU interpreted as a veiled attack on party chairman Markus Söder. Weber had written that the party must follow "the right thing" and pursue a policy "oriented towards the common good". The ministers now quote those very phrases back at him, implying that Weber himself has fallen short of those standards by not delivering results in Brussels. The message is unambiguous: Weber's own moral yardstick is now being used to measure his performance.

Dear Manfred, you rightly remind us that good policy must follow the right thing. That politics must lead programmatically and serve the common good, not chase headlines.

Agricultural lobbies pile on pressure

The ministers explicitly refer to a separate protest letter from the Bavarian Forest Owners Association, the Family Farms Land and Forest association and the Bavarian Farmers' Association. Those groups had also complained to Weber that they were "not being heard properly, but put off or simply not taken into account" by EU-level contacts and by Weber himself. The joint demand is blunt: the CSU's European frontman must finally deliver results and speak out against the two regulations in their current form. "We expect results at last," the second letter states.

We ask you to live up to your political responsibility as EPP group chairman and to speak out against these projects in the present form. Rural areas are the political backbone of the civic centre, and we now expect results at last.

Internal CSU friction intensifies

The double intervention sharpens the fault line inside the CSU between the party's Brussels wing and its Munich-based state government. Weber, as EPP chief, must navigate coalition compromises in the European Parliament, while the Bavarian government faces direct pressure from its rural base ahead of upcoming elections. The incident also revives the shadow of Weber's Pentecost letter, revealing that the power struggle between Weber and Söder has not subsided. By choosing to attack Weber with his own words, Kaniber and Beißwenger have turned a policy dispute into an act of internal party accountability.