Farmers’ party pushes for hard line on agriculture in Dutch coalition  

The Dutch “citizen-farmers” movement BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) put agriculture among the top priorities in the coalition agreement signed on Thursday (16 May) with far-right PVV, liberal VVD, and anti-corruption NSC.  

The new right-wing coalition in the Netherlands has pledged to act with “courage” to simplify the EU’s green rules, tackle the country’s “manure crisis” and bring back tax cuts on agricultural fuel. 

“We want farmers, gardeners and fishermen to have a future again,” said the 26-page compromise text, which the BBB leader Caroline van der Plas described as an “impressive” result for the sector when it was presented. 

The agrarian party, founded in 2019 amid farmer protests against the government’s plan to crack down on agricultural emissions, scored a historic success when it won the regional elections in March 2023. 

In Thursday’s agreement, the three parties pledged not to approve national laws that would be stricter for farmers than EU legislation but also to push for more “workable” rules in Brussels.  

The right-wing coalition also endorsed the trendy concept of “food security” by renaming the agriculture ministry to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature, dropping “food quality” from its title.  

The content of the agreement will be discussed in the Dutch parliament on 22 May.  

The nitrogen crisis 

One of the key points of the compromise is that it shuts the door on forced livestock cuts, which the previous government considered as a way of cutting nitrogen emissions from animal manure and fertilisers. 

With the highest livestock density in Europe and environmental groups sounding the alarm over the state of ecosystems, the country has been facing a so-called “nitrogen crisis” for years now.  

In 2019, a ruling by the country’s national court found that the government’s strategy to reduce excess nitrogen in vulnerable areas was in breach of EU law. 

“We want to tackle the manure crisis by fighting hard in Brussels,” van der Plas said on Thursday. 

A key compromise in this direction is to push for another Dutch derogation from the EU’s Nitrates Directive, the current one expiring at the end of 2025. 

The directive aims to prevent nutrients such as nitrogen from polluting water bodies, and the Netherlands – along with other member states – benefits from an exemption that allows farmers to spread livestock manure above the bloc’s limit. 

The coalition also wants to reassess Natura 2000 areas – designated ecosystems for protected species across the EU territory. 

Agricultural diesel 

The BBB also secured the comeback of “red diesel”, a type of agricultural fuel which benefited from a reduced tax rate until the Dutch government abolished it for environmental reasons in 2013.  

Van der Plas said that its reintroduction would mean a 28-cent per litre refund for farmers from 2027. 

The debate over subsidising agricultural diesel has gained momentum in the EU in recent months, with farmer protests in Germany making the government change course and phase out the tax cuts by 2026 instead of 2024.  

Mirror clauses 

The new right-wing coalition highlighted the need for reciprocity standards between producers in third countries and those in the EU.  

“When concluding international trade agreements, a level playing field is paramount,” reads the document, adding that the Netherlands does not want to import goods that are not allowed to be produced in the EU. 

 [Edited by Angelo Di Mambro and Zoran Radosavljevic]

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