Keeping farmers' seats in the water board, but less

The guaranteed seats in the water boards will remain, but there will be fewer: four instead of seven or eight. Two of these are farm seats and two are for nature reserves. Companies are losing their secured seats.

This afternoon (31 May) the House of Representatives voted on a proposal by Laura Bromet (GroenLinks) and Tjeerd de Groot (D66) to democratize the Water Board Act. In that context, they wanted to get rid of the secured seats completely. The bill was passed, but the guaranteed seats for agriculture were ultimately retained thanks to an amendment by Pieter Grinwis (ChristenUnie) that was also passed. The amended last version was supported by party members of Bromet and De Groot, Senna Maatoug (GroenLinks) and Joost Sneller (D66).

The vote on the amendment to the Water Board Act was postponed last week for the necessary consultation. Grinwis had tabled an amendment during the May 18 debate on the amendment to the law. At the time, it still stated that there would be a fixed division of the secured seats of two for the unbuilt category (agriculture), two for nature and two for companies. In the final version, the two secured seats for companies were lost and there are only four secured seats, half of which are for agriculture. The adopted amendment also states that the requirement that at least one member of the executive board must be an interested party with a secured seat is removed.

First room
A motion was also submitted to allow the new distribution of seats to take effect only after the 2023 water board elections, but it was rejected. After the vote, co-initiator Bromet announced that it had been a very interesting political journey so far and that they would like to continue it in the Senate, and will therefore defend the amendment of the law there.

Linda van Eekeres

Linda van Eekeres is co-writing editor-in-chief. She mainly focuses on macro-economic developments and the influence of politics on the agricultural sector.

l.vaneekeres@boerenbusiness. Nl

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