As of: March 26, 2024, 4:57 p.m
By: Simon Schröder
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Germany's largest environmental organization is dissatisfied with the Greens.
The government is making too many concessions to farmers, especially in the area of ecology.
Berlin – Germany's largest environmental organization, the Nature Conservation Association (Nabu), is dissatisfied with the Greens' government work.
“The performance balance in the area of ecology is definitely significantly weaker than what we hoped and expected under green government participation,” said Nabu President Jörg-Andreas Krüger to the newspaper
taz
.
He particularly criticized the planned withdrawal of environmental regulations for agriculture.
Özdemir does not reject the EU proposal: insects and farm birds are in danger, according to the Nabu boss
As an example, Krüger cited the fact that Federal Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir (The Greens) did not reject the EU Commission's proposal to permanently abolish so-called compulsory fallow land.
Anyone who receives agricultural subsidies actually has to leave four percent of their arable land to nature.
This EU rule has already been repealed several times, and now the Commission wants to largely withdraw it in response to the farmers' protests until the next reform of agricultural subsidies.
Jörg Andreas Krüger at a federal press conference in Berlin.
The Nabu boss criticized the politicians' concessions to the farmers.
© Jürgen Heinrich via IMAGO
“The populations of insects and farm birds will not recover like this,” criticized Krüger.
“We have a massive die-off of insects and a decline in farmland birds.” This is due, among other things, to “the fact that there is too little fallow land and too little space for biological diversity.”
Krüger sharply criticizes the Greens - but Özdemir also has harsh words for the new regulations
Krüger also has harsh words for the Greens when it comes to fertilizer regulations.
In his opinion, future issues are being ignored out of fear of current political discussions until the ecological problems become so serious that even tougher action has to be taken.
“In the end, this falls entirely on the farmers’ feet.
This means they don’t have any planning security.”
The Nabu boss described the assumption that all environmental associations were “super close to the Greens” as wrong.
“We environmental associations have not felt this in recent years because the Greens, in government responsibility, have also made many decisions in the federal states that we shake our heads about,” said Krüger.
But Özdemir also criticized the EU's current plans to relax many of the environmental regulations for agriculture.
“You always go to extremes,” explained the German agriculture minister on the
Phoenix
television station .
Some time ago, the EU went too far and made proposals for savings targets for plant protection products that, for example, brought wine and fruit cultivation to a standstill.
“Now people are going to the other extreme and no longer want to know anything about species and climate protection.
That is also the wrong way,” as Özdemir explained.
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Agriculture takes to the streets – The Greens and the EU give in and make concessions
The EU's concessions to agriculture were the topic of the agriculture ministers' meeting in Brussels on Tuesday (March 26).
They should be waved through as an expedited procedure.
However, according to representatives of several EU states, Germany takes a critical view of this.
The federal government made an additional statement in which Özdemir expressed his displeasure with the far-reaching concessions.
The farmers' protests in Germany were triggered by a cut in the agricultural diesel subsidy for agriculture.
This regulation was also seen as quite sensible by many environmentalists.
But farmers nationwide took to the barricades.
The protests spread like wildfire across the entire EU until the countries' agriculture ministers finally gave in.
(afp/dpa/SiSchr)