While coalition parties still strongly disagree on the implementation of the nitrogen policy, according to political journalist Leendert Beekman, this has not yet led to a crisis within the coalition. ‘Everything is sharpened by the elections in an already very flammable dossier’.
According to Beekman, the VVD and the CDA are particularly annoyed by an interview given today by D66 MP Tjeerd de Groot, in which he says the nitrogen dossier is moving too slowly as far as he is concerned. ‘This is where the mandatory set of tools comes into play. We will have it on April 1, then there will also be talk of a date in which the peakloaders will have to be bought. D66 says: anticipate that moment, do it this year. But coalition partners ChristenUnie, CDA and VVD were not satisfied with this position of D66.’
Discussion
According to Beekman, it is highly questionable what the nitrogen debate will produce in the House today. ‘Today it will not be clear who the peakloaders are and what exactly the regulation will be. That letter arrives on April 1, therefore after the provincial council elections. So today we hear a kind of wish list, everyone is telling us what the nitrogen policies should look like in the near future and what the role of the provinces should be in that.”