Minister backs custom arrangements on nitrogen near Natura 2000 areas

Minister Van Essen (Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature) says she supports room for custom arrangements in the nitrogen zones around Natura 2000 areas. She set out her position in answers to parliamentary questions, received on 26 October 2026.

“I endorse the call to offer room for tailor-made solutions and to do justice to the characteristics of each area,” the minister said.

She said the national zoning approach is uniform at its core and steers towards extensive farming. It meets the call for a level playing field and prevents a patchwork (“lappendeken”) of rules and instruments, she said. That, she said, gets permitting going again.

The government is now looking with the provinces at whether zoning is useful and necessary for specific Natura 2000 areas. It is examining nature-goal analyses and knowledge of each area.

The approach lets provinces tailor measures to area characteristics and ongoing processes, and fill in the additionality requirement. Van Essen said the contribution of the national instruction rules to restoring these areas comes first, and tailoring cannot reduce that effect. She also said too much variation in rules must be avoided because it makes implementation and enforcement more complex.

One form of tailoring is drawing the exact zone boundary along parcel and landscape structures. Another is a hydrological zone of influence wider than 500 or 1,000 metres. The minister will describe the options in a letter to the Tweede Kamer this autumn.