The district court in The Hague has decided to scrap Schiphol’s nature permit. According to the court, the permit, which was issued by the Cabinet in September 2023, was “not prepared with the required care and not sufficiently motivated.”The case was initiated by various environmental organizations, the municipal council of Nieuwkoop in Zuid-Holland, and the Amsterdam college of Mayor and Alderman.
Environmental organizations argued that the permit was issued in error. It temporarily granted Schiphol the right to half a million flight movements annually, to be reduced later by 60,000 flights. The environmental groups still believe 440,000 flights to be far too many.
To try to increase flexibility, Schiphol spent 17 million euros buying up farmland in the area over the past few years to gain more nitrogen emissions credits in the hope of offsetting the airport’s own emissions. The airport believed this was what they needed to secure the permit.
One of the plaintiffs, Mobilization for the Environment (MOB) has already spent years advocating the issue of environmental damage linked to air traffic. During the court hearing last year, nitrogen deposition calculations were hotly debated, including the years used to set baselines for the data, the environmental impact of sulphur dioxide, and also noise calculations.
Schiphol said it went through the same process for obtaining the nature permit that other companies face, and denied that former Nature and Nitrogen Emissions Minister Christianne van der Wal relaxed the rules to make it easier for the airport. Already last year, the court said that Schiphol’s request for a permit should have also determined if the farmland nitrogen credits were first needed to restore nature areas.