Lars Løkke proposes a rescue plan for the marine environment in the EU and acknowledges that his own agricultural agreement has caused problems. Lars Løkke Rasmussen now admits that he previously as prime minister implemented policies that have contributed to the destruction of the marine environment. He says this to Politiken. The statement comes in connection with a new initiative from the Moderates (Moderaterne), who want to increase efforts in the EU to improve the marine environment. The new initiative will introduce new, stricter requirements for how EU member states handle water environmental areas. However, according to experts, some of the problems experienced by the Danish marine environment stem from the agricultural agreement that Lars Løkke Rasmussen led as the Venstre Prime Minister in 2015, writes Politiken. The agreement allowed farmers to increase the use of nitrogen on their fields. The regulation was based on voluntarism, which has since been shown not to be effective. Several experts warned that the agricultural agreement would be harmful to the marine environment, but Løkke’s government adopted it anyway. On Monday, he tells Politiken that with all political decisions, there will be experts who tell a politician they are wrong. Lars Løkke Rasmussen points out that “some parties” at the time said that through voluntarism, agriculture could solve the task of limiting and reducing nitrogen emissions. – There was a political ambition to make a reduction, and there were some parties that said we can do it this way. Then there were some who said, we don’t think that will happen. Unfortunately, they were right. And I am actually really sorry that they were right, he tells the newspaper. As the chairman of the Moderates party, he is now focused on learning from his mistakes. The new tones please the Danish Society for the Conservation of Nature (Danmarks Naturfredningsforening), where president Maria Reumert Gjerding emphasizes that politicians must learn from their mistakes in order to help the marine environment.

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