Overview
- The federal cabinet, which approved the Agriculture Ministry’s draft on Wednesday, launched a fertiliser law rewrite to cut nitrate in water and sent the bill to parliament after data showed one in four test sites exceeded EU limits in 2020–2022.
- The plan sets up nationwide monitoring that uses farm management and fertilising records to measure how field practices affect groundwater, rivers and seas.
- To cut red tape, the bill deletes the old nutrient flow accounting rules known as Stoffstrombilanzierung and lets agencies share existing farm data to avoid duplicate filings.
- The draft creates national rules to carry out the EU fertiliser‑products regulation, with the federal agriculture agency BLE set to authorise and supervise bodies that certify fertiliser products.
- The BDEW utility group warned the monitoring falls short because it omits systematic, farm‑level nutrient flow balances seen as key to tracing responsibility for nitrate pollution.