With live streamToday, the House of Representatives will cross swords with Minister of Agriculture Piet Adema and Minister of Nitrogen Christianne van der Wal about the collapsed agricultural agreement. Opposition parties fear it will become ‘the debate of half-truths’.
Marcia Nieuwenhuis
Latest update:
12:37
BBB frontwoman Caroline van der Plas kicks off. “Who in the Netherlands takes a job with the announcement that they have to purchase equipment for sustainability, while it is not clear whether you will receive a salary and how much?” she wonders aloud. “Shoot me,” she says. “As if farmers are some kind of crazy Henkies.”
She emphasizes that supermarkets have no obligation at all to purchase Dutch products, so the question is whether the Dutch products that must meet a higher sustainability standard will be sold. According to her, there might as well be Romanian products there.
GroenLinks party chairman Jesse Klaver and D66 MP Tjeerd de Groot stand up for MPs whose 06 numbers have been shared online. Klaver: ,,You keep your hands off your colleagues. Basta.” Members of parliament drum on the benches, to add luster to his call. Klaver also criticizes the vagueness of the cabinet’s plans in the draft Agricultural Agreement. The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency notes that too much is too vague, as a result of which the effects cannot even be calculated. According to the GroenLinks leader, this should lead to ‘faces of shame’.
According to the GroenLinks leader, ‘quite little has happened’ in the Netherlands since 2019. “It will not happen without a firm approach.” The conclusion of an agricultural agreement had to take the sting out of that conflict. But with the resignation of the largest agricultural organization LTO, the agricultural agreement collapsed last week. The House of Representatives is discussing this today with ChristenUnie minister Piet Adema and Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Christianne van der Wal is also there.
SP Member of Parliament Sandra Beckerman lashes out at D66 Member of Parliament Tjeerd de Groot: “Isn’t it a scandal that one in three farmers is below the poverty line and that the cabinet does not have the beginning of an answer?” there is a standstill due to the collapse of the Agricultural Agreement, he says ‘not to be shared’. “But it’s going too slow.”
D66 member Tjeerd de Groot and BBB frontwoman Caroline van der Plas also have a heated discussion. Van der Plas fiercely rejects this and does not want the suggestion to be created that she only stands up for the interests of the public. ‘big agro’, as the agricultural industry is also called. ,,I will not let anyone say everything,” she says to the D66 member. She thinks it is not possible that the D66 member of the GroenLinks reports that they are ‘on a leash’ from BBB in the provinces.
The failure to pull the sting out of the agricultural conflict has become apparent again today. Farmers now also report by tractor. The municipality of The Hague has issued an emergency order to ban tractors from the city. Follow all about it here in the live blog. Hundreds of farmers may move to the city to draw attention to their views. Action group Farmers Defense Force (FDF) reluctantly moves to the Malieveld. Two activists have been arrested.
Painful
“What a painful conclusion that we are still debating the same subject,” said MP Pieter Omtzigt. He previously pointed out on social media that the cabinet was brooding on a dairy and meat tax, according to a footnote to the documents.
Even though the cabinet preaches freedom of choice for farmers, that is not the full story, according to GroenLinks MP Laura Bromet. “I would also like everything to be voluntary, but that is half the truth. These are no longer choices, but the result of binding international agreements and judgments of judges.” She wonders: ,,If there comes a time when you do have to buy out, what have you done with the trust in politics? ?” According to her, the debate on the agricultural agreement is becoming the ‘debate of half-truths’.
Maximum number of cows
With the failure to reach the agreement, nothing stands in the way of Minister Adema to set a maximum standard for the number of cows (and other livestock) per hectare. Without an agreement with the sector, the establishment of that standard will depend on the political jousting in the House of Representatives. On the side of the government, this has always been taken into account, a source reported this week: “Plan B is certainly there, then the cabinet will do it. Just with Adema.” ChristenUnie MP Pieter Grinwis expects that Minister of Agriculture Adema will quickly ‘show leadership’.
Read more about the fine print of the draft Agricultural Agreement here: What did it actually say?
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