‘Cabinet relaxed nitrogen rules exclusively for Schiphol’ | RTL News

And this nature permit is mainly intended to prevent Schiphol from shrinking for the time being.

Stalling time with a permit

Experts say that they do not think that the nature permit will really hold up in court, but issuing the permit appears to be mainly a strategy to buy time for the airport.

This is evident from internal documents of the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) that were released following a Woo request from environmental organization MOB.

For years, Schiphol did not have a valid nature permit, but the minister tolerated the airport’s illegally high nitrogen emissions.

But toleration is only allowed temporarily, so a nature permit had to be obtained quickly for the airport, writes the NRC. If this did not happen, Schiphol would have to halve the number of flights – in the most extreme case – as well as the number of jobs, according to the internal documents.

Deliberate delay in procedures

However, issuing a nature permit to the polluting airport is also difficult, because Schiphol emits too much nitrogen and Dutch nature suffers as a result.

The released documents, which the newspaper published, state that the Minister of Agriculture is therefore deliberately delaying the permit procedures.

This means that the ministry does not have to enforce regulations and the shrinkage of Schiphol is postponed for a while. ‘Issuing a permit that involves legal risks’, the ministry writes, is part of that delay strategy ‘in order to gain time.’