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Tractor with liquid manure trailer: Too much fertilizer damages the groundwater
Photo: Carsten Rehder / DPA
The nitrate levels in groundwater in Germany are too high - and Germany is lagging behind in implementing the relevant EU requirements.
In the struggle with the Commission in Brussels about stronger protection, the Federal Cabinet has now approved new guidelines for nitrate-polluted areas.
The federal government announced that the new regulation would change a procedure that the Commission had objected to in designating "red areas" in which stricter fertilizer regulations apply.
This gives agriculture a reliable framework for action.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the aim is to adopt the administrative regulation before the summer break in the Federal Council, i.e. by the meeting on July 8th.
Because of the long-simmering dispute about the excessively high nitrate levels, the federal government sent new proposals to Brussels in February.
They amount to an expansion of the "red areas."
These would increase by about 45 percent to 2.9 million hectares of agricultural land.
Network of measuring points should become denser
The water suppliers called on the federal states to support and implement the proposals.
"Fertilizer specifications, from which a large part of the problem areas are excluded - that was and is an intolerable situation," said the Vice President of the Association of Municipal Enterprises, Karsten Specht.
»The new specifications are an important step towards better protection of our drinking water resources.«
With the new regulations, Germany also wants to avert impending fines.
In order to comply with EU regulations in the future, the previous federal government had already tightened fertilizer requirements for farmers.
As a result of the new regulation that is now planned, the procedure for designating the polluted areas by the federal states will be standardized nationwide.
In 2021, the EU Commission had expressed concerns about the previous practice, which politicians had agreed on after a long dispute.
It is now planned to abolish the previous internal differentiation and emission-based modelling.
They allowed different influences to be taken into account, so that some areas were exempt from restrictions despite excessive values.
In the future, there should be a new expulsion procedure from 2028 at the latest.
The basis for this should be a measuring point system to be significantly consolidated by the federal states by 2024.
The new regulation still requires the approval of the Bundesrat.
apr/dpa