Background Nitrogen mood
New Agriculture Minister Van Essen faces baptism of fire
Minister Jaimi van Essen of LVVN (D66) will face his baptism of fire this coming week. On Thursday, he will have the opportunity to defend the ministry's budget. He was already in the House of Representatives last week for this purpose, together with State Secretary Erkelens, but at that time he had to listen to what the Members of Parliament had to say. This coming week, it is his turn to speak.
That is eagerly awaited. Of course, quite a lot has already been said about the new minister. For example, by Johan Derksen at Today Inside and in various other media. Cancelling for the Day of the Countryside did not go down entirely well either. However, the Netherlands has yet to discover who he is and how he will really perform.
Top priority and House of Representatives
Naturally, the House of Representatives primarily wants to hear from him how he intends to handle the nitrogen dossier. After nearly seven years of 'muddling through', the nitrogen issue is still burning. The question, however, is whether he will reveal his true intentions on the matter this coming week. Van Essen is not the first to decide on this, either. Nitrogen is chefsache in the new cabinet, and even the Prime Minister still has to navigate. As the leader of a minority coalition, he must get the policy through the House of Representatives.
Gambling on a quick agreement with the left-wing parties is an option, but if he does not also get some of the right-wing parties on board, he will not need to seek support there next time, and some of the coalition parties will find themselves maneuvered into a political corner where they do not want to be.
Report avalanche
In the meantime, the preliminary skirmishes for a new nitrogen debate have indeed been launched. This week, members of the House of Representatives already received a large load of reports and accompanying documents in their inboxes. As is customary, some publicity has already been generated around it. The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL, one of the co-authors) indicated once again that livestock farming needs to reduce its operations much more to meet nitrogen targets than it has done so far.
New reports, old premises
It sounds almost familiar. In fact, it is nothing more than the well-known story: while the studies by PBL, RIVM, and Wageningen ER may be new, the texts are based on the unchanged old assumptions and calculations. Time has moved on, the insights have not been updated, but under a new cabinet, they might get a new chance.
The Netherlands and the rest of the world
Aerius and the underlying principles, the critical deposition value (CDV), and the old arithmetic lower limit that the court still relies on; nothing has changed regarding this. As long as this remains the case, the Netherlands will continue to face problems such as those arising from the Bonaire ruling From January: nature in Bonaire is in poor shape; therefore, extra measures must be taken throughout the Netherlands to compensate for this. The next court ruling may well concern nature in Nepal and the consequences thereof for the Netherlands. Which once again points out the sometimes bizarre difference between legal reality and physical reality (and actually the bizarre pretensions of the legal world regarding experienced reality).
Lobby offensive
It is not only the cabinet that is preparing for the implementation of a new nitrogen policy. Advocacy groups are doing the same. LTO and other agricultural parties have already set to work lobbying and preparatory discussions, but do the agricultural parties know from each other who is already giving away what for a potential agreement?
Nitrogen or phosphate?
Moreover, the question is through which track the cabinet will choose to intervene for nitrogen reduction in agriculture. Will it be via the nitrogen track, or will the phosphate track be chosen? The practice of recent years shows that nitrogen measures are difficult and also very expensive. Buying out farms costs hundreds of millions, while the gain is only a few moles of deposition reduction. Compared to that, cutting the phosphate allowance is a relatively cheap, but at the same time very harsh, intervention. Farms with insufficient phosphate rights are forced to reduce manure production and, consequently, their livestock, under penalty of heavy fines. It is a risk that is being taken seriously into account in the agricultural sector, but which, for understandable reasons, no one is really looking forward to.
Will Van Essen release any information about this in the coming week? Or does the Agriculture, Nature and Nitrogen Taskforce, led by Prime Minister Jetten, need to reach an agreement on it first?
Klaas van der Horst
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