The ruling that the Council of State made in mid-December on the Amercentrale and Rendac has made agriculture even more desperate about the nitrogen legislation than it already was. With that ruling, the country's highest court also swept all 'positive refusals' for NB Act permits off the table, plus a lot of unused emission space. And what it means for the granting of permits is not yet clear.
In short, perhaps only the chaos theory supporters and fervent nitrogen haters around MOB and their ilk were happy about it.
Sweetness keeps courage
Yet there is at least one politician who still has courage. The honor for this goes to Gelders BBB deputy Harold Zoet. He said at the province's New Year's reception that this 'will certainly still issue permits'. Whether this is overconfidence that is often displayed at the start of the new year, time will tell. It is clear that Zoet expects a lot from Minister of Agriculture Femke Wiersma (also BBB) for the realization of his intentions and from an adjustment of the arithmetic lower limit for nitrogen. "With the increase of the 0,05 mol standard to 1 mol N/ha you could help many PAS reporters, but that requires a change in the law; that has to come from the ministry of LVVN", LTO Noord quotes him.
Everyone is studying
The problem is that Minister Wiersma will have to come out of her chair further in the new year than she has done so far. Zoet has been a white raven with his optimism so far. The other provinces, their interest group the IPO and also the ministry of LVVN have not come much further than saying that they are carefully studying the contested ruling of the Council of State. Various organizations and interest groups outside of agriculture, such as in construction and aviation, are also doing so, because the Amer and Rendac ruling threatens to have equally disastrous consequences for these sectors.
Energy drink
For action group MOB and friends, however, the verdict works like an energy drink. website of MOB Dutch airports in particular are being warned in various reports. They must halve or even worse, according to the organization. The nitrogen rules now threaten to suffocate a large part of the economy, and of course that long before the infamous December ruling.
Politics must solve
This does not alter the fact that – difficult or not – a solution must be found for the stagnating granting of permits. That a combination of failing legislation and a lack of insight into the consequences of legal interpretations and applications is causing the Netherlands to have a legal nitrogen infarction is one thing, but that politics would subsequently be unable to provide a workable solution is something completely different. That is precisely what politics is ideally suited for: getting things that have stalled moving and allowing society to function normally.
Of course, that does not mean that all rules should or may be thrown overboard. Those rules are for good order, balance and fairness, not to grant extreme groups a grab for power. It is to be hoped that politics will take its responsibility in this.
Work on Thrift Store
For the agricultural sector, it is important, partly for the above reasons, to have its own affairs in order and to properly account for its own actions. Having reached that point, it is important for the dairy farming sector to take another good look at an instrument such as the Kringloopwijzer, as a group of Wageningen researchers did last year. They established that this instrument has been verified and validated on many benchmarks, but not particularly well when it comes to emissions. They also presented their findings. So there is still some work to be done there.