Joint press release
Fertilizer law proposals ignore European legal requirements and decision of the Federal Administrative Court
The Nitrate Initiative comments on the current proposals on fertilizer legislation in the coalition negotiations:
The deletion of the Material Flow Balance Regulation is the wrong strategy for implementing the impact monitoring required by the EU Commission. Only an instrument such as the material flow balance ensures an effective instrument for recording all nutrient flows on a farm. The complete operational nutrient balance is therefore the only meaningful and therefore indispensable data basis for the promised monitoring.
The so-called “red areas” describe regions in Germany that are over-fertilized with nitrate and where nitrate levels exceed the EU limit values for groundwater. They were newly designated to settle the EU Commission’s infringement proceedings due to the failure to transpose the EU Nitrates Directive into German law for over 30 years. The limit value of 50 milligrams per liter of groundwater is to be ensured by applying stricter rules on fertilization in the over-fertilized “red areas”. The current text of the coalition agreement now wants to abolish the strict rules against over-fertilization in the “red areas”. Only compliance with
the EU limit values guarantees effective groundwater protection.
In addition, the new federal government would also risk great legal uncertainty for both agriculture and water protection with the planned easing of over-fertilization with liquid manure and fermentation residues. The planned rules would hardly stand up in court, as the most recent ruling by the Federal Administrative Court on 6 March 2025 calls for significantly more measures and political action against nitrate in groundwater and thus clearly rejects
a softening of water protection in over-fertilized regions. The Nitrate Initiative is calling on the new German government to finally give clear priority to protecting the population and
groundwater from nitrate pollution with the help of EU-compliant fertilizer legislation.
Responsible persons in the associations:
Jutta Sundermann – aktion agrar – Co-founder
Martin Weyand – BDEW – Chief Executive Water/Wastewater
Sascha Maier – BUND – Water Policy Officer
Florian Schöne – DNR – Managing Director
Sascha Müller-Kraenner – DUH – Federal Managing Director
Thomas Schäfer – Global Nature Fund – Head of Living Lakes & Water and Nature Conservation
Christiane Huxdorff – Greenpeace – Campaigner for Sustainable Agriculture
Michael Bender – Green League – Head of the Federal Water Contact Point
Clivia Conrad – ver.di – Head of the Federal Water Management Group
Michael Berger – WWF – Sustainable Agriculture Officer
Press contact:
Press office BDEW
Tel.: 030 / 300 199 1174
Mail: presse@bdew.de