Provinces
Competent authority for provincial infrastructure, nature and spatial planning.
- Policy
Permit-free is not built: why the nitrogen package does not replace the environmental work
The government wants to scrap the permit requirement for activities with low nitrogen deposition through an arithmetic floor. That is good news for small projects. But for the major infrastructure agenda, the package shifts the bottleneck; it does not resolve it.
Read more → - Analysis
Drinking water is becoming the next grid congestion, and the sector treats it as a permitting problem
All ten Dutch drinking water companies need extra extraction capacity before 2030, but new sources are not materialising. The sector points to slow permitting. We argue: the real bottleneck is the absence of stakeholder and environmental management around the extraction sites.
Read more → - Policy
Saving for the Lelylijn: what regional co-financing means for stakeholder and environmental management
Northern Netherlands has chosen its own Lelylijn Regional Savings Fund of €400 million per year. This shifts more than just financing: governance relationships and the role of stakeholder and environmental management also move with it.
Read more → - Policy
At the tipping point: what the environmental services robustness deadline means for infrastructure projects
By 1 April 2026, all 28 Dutch environmental services must meet the robustness criteria for licensing, inspection and enforcement. Many will not. This has direct consequences for permitting processes in infrastructure projects, and for the organisations that depend on them.
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