In the very first minute of the parliamentary debate, Caroline van der Plas of the BoerBurgerBeweging launched a no-confidence motion against nitrogen minister Christianne van der Wal (VVD) on Thursday. Even before the sixteen parties in the debate had said anything, and before the minister himself had been able to defend himself against anything.
It was indicative of the stalemate in the political debate about the nitrogen approach: a theme that will affect the whole of the Netherlands in the coming years, from farmers and builders to producers and citizens. Many parties agree that political The Hague is to blame for the nitrogen crisis. But the House of Representatives is chronically and deeply divided about the approach.
Second fault in top-100
Minister Van der Wal’s nitrogen policy is based on outdated data from 2018 on livestock, said Van der Plas. RIVM turned out to have made mistakes for the second time this week in a top 100 list of the largest nitrogen polluters, the peak loaders. Johan Remkes, who has mediated with angry farmers, speaks in his report of a faltering nitrogen policy and a one-sided focus on farmers as emitters.
All reasons why Van der Wal would be “totally unsuitable” for the office, according to the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB).
Most parties found BBB’s early no-confidence vote inappropriate
Most parties found the early motion of no confidence inappropriate – except, among others, Member of Parliament Wybren van Haga, who also wanted to table such a motion. Van der Plas later acknowledged in the debate that her motion had no chance in advance. “A bit of a wonderful figure under constitutional law,” the SGP called it. At the deadline of this edition it was still unclear how it would end and how the ministers were defending themselves.
peak loaders
The parliamentary debate was about Remkes’ nitrogen report, which the cabinet has almost fully embraced. The goal remains to halve nitrogen emissions by 2030, but with interim measurement moments and some room for postponement. Unlike Remkes, the cabinet only wants to take more than one year to buy out 500 to 600 peak loaders.
That time is not here, said GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver from the opposition. Certainly not since the Council of State on Wednesday deleted the so-called construction exemption in the so-called Porthos case. This ‘goat path’ that the cabinet had devised for the construction, is in violation of European nature legislation, the Council of State ruled. For current and future building permit applications, it is now first necessary to calculate how much nitrogen is released during construction.
It will lead to the delay of many projects in a time of housing shortage, fear the construction industry and the cabinet. The only real solution is to reduce nitrogen emissions and restore vulnerable nature areas, according to Minister Van der Wal.
The image that is being given is that things will not go so smoothly. That’s a false promise
Jesse Clover GreenLeft
It therefore does not help, Jesse Klaver said in the parliamentary debate, when agriculture minister Piet Adema (ChristenUnie) says that we should “not be dogmatic” with the target year 2030. If nature restoration is well on its way, and if there are good reasons for it, halving the nitrogen according to Adema also become “2032, ’33 or ’34”, reported Fidelity this week. With this casual statement at a farmers’ meeting in Drachten, Adema gave his own translation of the time slack that Remkes mentions.
“The image that is being given is that things will not go so smoothly,” said Klaver. “That’s a false promise.” GroenLinks therefore urges the cabinet, as Remkes advised, to set a deadline of one year to stop the 500 to 600 peak loaders: preferably voluntarily, but if necessary by force. Otherwise, the whole of the Netherlands will be ‘locked’ for much longer.
Read the article You can’t get rid of the biggest polluters quickly
Peasant protests
This resulted in Klaver’s critical interruptions from the coalition parties VVD, CDA and ChristenUnie, among others. Just like the cabinet, they want to try as many farmers as possible voluntarily to buy out; nobody wants hard farmers’ protests again, the hope is to conclude an agricultural agreement with agricultural organizations about the future of the sector.
CDA member Derk Boswijk called it a pity that Klaver would place ‘the emphasis’ on the withdrawal of peak loaders’ permits. “Many parties too easily get over the fact that they are family businesses that earn their money honestly,” said VVD member Thom van Campen later in the debate. “The biggest mistake we can make here is playing a fair-weather show,” says Klaver. “As if it won’t hurt.”
Where left-wing and right-wing central parties clashed in the nitrogen debate, and D66 also clashed with the other coalition parties, the gap with parties on the right wing seems unbridgeable.
Parties such as the PVV, Forum for Democracy and Interest of the Netherlands (BVNL) deny that there is a nitrogen problem. “The native culture is a beautiful deciduous forest landscape,” said MP Gideon van Meijeren. The current nature that the cabinet wants to restore is merely a landscaped ‘cultural landscape’, according to Forum. Wybren van Haga of BVNL in turn sees the influx of migrants as a contributing factor to nitrogen emissions. The life of a populist should be pleasant with such easy solutions, Klaver responded.
We don’t have a nitrogen problem, we have a nitrogen law problem
Caroline van der Plas BBB
Several parties tried to clarify what exactly the position of the BBB is: an attractive party for many farmers, which can score in the Provincial Council elections in March 2023.
“I am not a nitrogen denier,” said Caroline van der Plas. “We don’t have a nitrogen problem, we have a nitrogen law problem.” In other words: it would not be European nature legislation, but Dutch politics that has subjected itself to a law to reduce nitrogen. “We are strangling ourselves with that legislation,” said Van der Plas.
At the same time, she turned around the question of whether or not nitrogen should be reduced.
The BBB should actually be renamed into just the BB, noted PvdA MP Joris Thijssen. “It is the farmers’ interests that you stand up for, but the citizens are not getting anywhere with it.”