Minister of Environment Magnus Heunicke (S) continues to face strong criticism from the opposition for his handling of pollution in the Danish seas. On Wednesday, Heunicke will once again face questioning in a parliamentary inquiry, where the opposition will present new demands to the minister, based on emissions from the company Cheminova, now FMC. According to DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation), the Ministry of Environment has granted permits multiple times for the release of environmentally harmful substances, which raises concerns among the opposition. The parties demand a comprehensive investigation of the Ministry of Environment and a withdrawal of a guideline from March on limit values for sea pollution. The opposition believes that new guidelines, which cannot be legally challenged, should be developed. “We need to clean up everything if we want our seas to be in a healthy state again,” says Martin Lidegaard, the political leader of the Radicals, to DR. Heunicke has had to defend his efforts repeatedly, most recently at a parliamentary inquiry on May 28, where the opposition did not find his responses satisfactory. In addition to the critique from the entire opposition, except for the Danish Democrats, who also support the criticism, the demands are also evident in an article in Altinget (Danish online news portal). The parties write that Denmark, surrounded by water, has used the sea as a dumping ground for toxic wastewater and nitrogen emissions from agriculture for decades. At the end of May, Heunicke promised an independent investigation of the environmental permits granted to Cheminova, but the opposition believes such an investigation is too narrow. Heunicke has previously assured the Folketing (Danish parliament) that the European Commission has approved the current guidelines for the release of environmentally harmful substances. However, several experts have pointed out to DR that the EU has not endorsed these guidelines, which Magnus Heunicke rejects as misleading.

Read the danish version here