Excellent: New anti-erosion rules await approval from the EC, they should accept them

Windy Jeníkov (Jihlava region) – New rules for anti-erosion protection are set to come into effect in the Czech Republic in less than two weeks, but the European Commission (EC) has not yet decided whether to accept the revised rules proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture. Instead of the original mandatory adherence to certain farming practices, the approach is more about motivation, said Minister of Agriculture Marek Výborný (KDU-ČSL) at today’s meeting of the Agricultural Union of the Czech Republic in Windy Jeníkov. He stated that after further adjustments, the EC is likely to accept the milder rules. Farmers welcome the new rules, but some mentioned at today’s meeting that they do not know what conditions they should prepare for. Výborný acknowledged that this is unfair to the farmers.

The new rules for farming on erosion-prone land, known as the DZES 5 standard, are set to take effect this year from July 1, and the original, stricter regime is still approved. The final position on whether the EC will approve the revised and relaxed conditions is still pending for the Czech Republic.

According to Výborný, the delay in the entire anti-erosion protection system was caused by the originally set overly strict anti-erosion decree, which imposed strict and complicated farming conditions. Therefore, the Ministry postponed the deadline for compliance by two years and created a system in which farmers could decide for themselves which practices to use to avoid the loss of soil due to rainfall, known as erosion events.

However, the European Commission rejected the revised rules and criticized the Czech Republic for the lack of controls in the system. “We had to adjust the system to include some level of control. We also simplified the system,” said Výborný. According to unofficial sources, the newly adjusted system should be accepted by the EC.

According to the portal for monitoring erosion, there were 509 erosion events in the Czech Republic last year, more than double compared to 2023. Environmentalists have previously stated that the increase in erosion is caused by extreme rainfall, landscape vulnerability, and insufficient anti-erosion protection. They claim that erosion causes damage worth billions of crowns and criticized the ministry for postponing the deadline for meeting anti-erosion conditions, which were originally supposed to take effect last year. (June 19)