“Adjustments” must be made to the state’s green agenda programme after the Netherlands’ pro-farmer party won the country’s recent election, a senior government party figure has said.
Pieter Heerma, the parliamentary leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party, has said that “adjustments” must now be made to green agenda restrictions after the victory of the FarmerCitizenMovement (BBB) party.
The populist movement romped home in the country’s provincial elections early this month, getting the most votes out of any group seemingly due to its opposition to the ruling government’s slavish dedication to the European Union’s green diktats, which will see the state forcibly close thousands of farms across the country.
Such a measure is now up in the air however, with multiple senior figures within the CDA now saying that the government must adjust its green agenda plans aimed at reducing nitrogen use to be more in line with the views of the general public.
“There is a new reality, and the government has to relate to that,” De Telegraaf reports Heerma as saying, echoing a previous statement made by overall party leader Wopke Hoekstra.
Such a suggestion however has been rejected by another party within the coalition government, Democrats 66, which has instead insisted that the plans to forcibly close some Dutch farms and render others unprofitable must continue.
“We clearly stated before the elections what we think is necessary to solve the nitrogen crisis and we still think so,” D66 leader Jan Paternotte remarked, with another parliamentarian for the party also insisting that the government must “go on” with the plans to force farms to close.
The disagreement regarding the future of the country’s green agenda measures appears to show a growing degree of political instability within the Netherlands, with the massive success of the BBB party appearing to make many members of parliament nervous.
Nevertheless, even members of the CDA still want to go ahead with some form of restrictions on nitrogen pollution, though such measures may be made slightly less intrusive in order to pacify public sentiment.
The implementation of reduced anti-nitrogen measures still bears the possibility to cause great harm to farmers across the country, many of whom are already struggling to deal with the heightened costs of fuel and fertiliser currently plaguing Europe.
Even if the Dutch government did not want to continue with the measures however, it is relatively unclear how they could escape implementing them, with the green agenda policies planned by the Dutch government largely being in response to laws put in place at the level of the European Union.
Bureaucrats in Brussels have mandated that both regional and national governments restrict nitrogen levels within their territories, with EU bigwigs even reportedly threatening to fine bodies that fail to implement their desired restrictions on farmers.
The move has been described by one MEP as a “power grab” on the part of EU senior officials, who he claimed are baring more and more resemblance to the Communist dictators of old.
“Not coincidentally, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all waged war against farmers, their independence and self-determination,” Tom Vandendriessche, a representative for the Flemish Vlaams Belang party remarked.
“Totalitarian regimes want to subjugate citizens. That is why they take away their freedoms, take away their arms to defend themselves, and take away their food to enslave citizens,” he continued. “Meat they want to replace with insects. Cars they want to ban. Freedom surveilled by QR codes. This EU is increasingly becoming an EUSSR.”
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