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The Environment and Planning Act (Omgevingswet) is a framework law that includes everything that is part of the “physical environment” (“leefomgeving”), and has come into force on January 1, 2024. The purpose of the Environment and Planning Act is to create a more coherent regulatory landscape for the physical environment by modernising, harmonising and combining laws into one single Act.

Overall, it (partially) repeals 26 laws and combines them into one single Act, including the Crisis & Recovery Act, the Environmental Management Act, and parts of the Water Act. Moreover, the Act reduces the previous 60 Orders in Council to 4 Orders in Council, and narrows down 75 ministerial regulations to one ‘Environment Regulation’. 

The Environment and Planning Act (Omgevingswet) is a framework law that includes everything that is part of the “physical environment” (“leefomgeving”), and has come into force on January 1, 2024. The overall objective of this Act in relation to society (Article 1.3) is “ensuring sustainable development, the habitability of the land and to protecting and enhancing this environment”, interrelated with the objective to achieve and maintain a safe and healthy physical environment and good environmental quality, because of “the intrinsic value of the natural world”. Moreover, the Act includes the aim of countering climate change, protecting the environment and nature, and safeguarding health. Overall, the purpose of the Environment and Planning Act is to create a more coherent regulatory landscape for the physical environment by modernising, harmonising and combining laws into one single Act, which makes for five major improvements:
<ol>
<li>More transparent environment and planning law</li>
<li>A more coherent and balanced approach to the physical environment</li>
<li>Room for customisation on the local level</li>
<li>Better and faster decision-making</li>
<li>Increased participation and incentive to increase the alignment of interests of different stakeholders, e.g. municipalities, developers and other actors influencing the physical environment through their activities</li>
</ol>
The Environment and planning act states that the physical environment shall in any event include:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li>buildings, infrastructure, water systems, water, soil, air, landscapes, the natural environment, cultural heritage, and world heritage</li>
</ul>
Overall, it (partially) repeals 26 laws and combines them into one single Act, including the Crisis &amp; Recovery Act, the Environmental Management Act, and parts of the Water Act. The Act consists of 6 core instruments that allow governments to write and implement policies, regulate activities, and implement projects, aimed at using and protecting the physical environment.&nbsp;
Among these is the Environment Vision, a strategic plan outlining the future aim for the development of the physical environment, which needs to be created by all government levels (national, provincial, and municipal level). An additional instrument are the decentralised rules, in which all decentralised governments have 1 regulation for the physical environment in their territory, e.g. frameworks for assessing permits or rules for activities of citizens and companies. The Act also creates a digital environment (“Omgevingsloket”) connecting all governments, and functions as a one-stop-shop for all applications to permits, zoning plan rules, and details on the quality of the physical environment. Moreover, the Act reduces the previous 60 Orders in Council to 4 Orders in Council, and narrows down 75 ministerial regulations to one ‘Environment Regulation’. It includes the following four Orders in Council. As part of the legislative package in introduces the following four decrees:
<ol>
<li>The Environment Decree of the Netherlands (Omgevingsbesluit)</li>
<li>The Environmental Quality Decree of the Netherlands (Besluit kwaliteit leefomgeving, Bkl)</li>
<li>The Environmental Activities Decree of the Netherlands (Besluit activiteiten leefomgeving, Bal)</li>
<li>The Environment Buildings Decree of the Netherlands (Besluit bouwwerken leefomgeving, Bbl)</li>
</ol>

Important themes within the Environment and Planning Act: Nitrogen
The government is combining nitrogen measures with other measures to improve the quality of water, soil, and nature, and fulfil the Dutch climate obligations. Measures are therefore introduced for 1) industry, 2) agriculture, 3) transport and the 4) construction sector in order to reduce nitrogen deposition and improve the quality of Natura 2000 areas. The Nitrogen Reduction and Nature Improvement Act previously regulated the structural nitrogen approach. With the Environment and Planning Act this law is repealed, and the following components become part of the system of the Environment and Planning Act:
<ul>
<li>Result-demanding environmental values for nitrogen deposition on nitrogen-sensitive Natura 2000 areas (Article 2.15a on ambient values for nitrogen)</li>
<ul>
<li>2025: 40% of the nitrogen sensitive Natura-2000 areas must be below the critical deposition value (&lt;255 mole per hectare) in 2025</li>
<li>2030: 50% of the nitrogen sensitive Natura-2000 areas must be below the critical deposition value in 2030</li>
<li>2035: 74% of the nitrogen sensitive Natura-2000 areas must be below the critical deposition value in 2035</li>
</ul>
<li>Obligatory national nitrogen reduction and nature improvement programme</li>
<li>Monitoring and adjustment system</li>
</ul>

Environment and Planning Act of the Netherlands (Omgevingswet)

The Environment Decree of the Netherlands (Omgevingsbesluit) contains rules on who is the competent authority for environmental permits, which procedure applies, enforcement and implementation, and how environmental impact assessment takes place. It also contains the Digital System for the Environment Act (DSO). Overall this Decree applies to all parties active in the physical environment - citizens, businesses, and government. The Decree also applies in the exclusive economic zone (the Dutch part of the North Sea).&nbsp;
It contains rules on the content and monitoring of Environmental Impact Assessment (Chapter 11) for plans, projects, and programmes, including a description of “the impact of the project on the climate and the vulnerability of the project to climate change” (11.18 f). The Decree also includes rules regarding transboundary environmental effects (11.3), and details around the advisory bodies and advisors for environmental assessment. Furthermore, Chapter 9 contains rules concerning damage.

The Environment Decree of the Netherlands (Omgevingsbesluit)

The Environmental Quality Decree of the Netherlands (Bkl) applies to central and local governments and contains:
<ul>
<li>Rules on environmental values, including the state’s environmental values for the protection of health and the environment, with ambient values having been established for the quality of air, water, and bathing sites.</li>
<li>Instruction rules for programmes related to water, including flood risk management, the approach to nitrogen reduction both on a national and municipal level, and rules regarding Natura 2000 areas</li>
<li>Rules for the monitoring of environmental values and other parameters, the collection of data, and the provision of information. Moreover, it contains rules dealing with monitoring information on climate change mitigation (e.g. monitoring emissions of greenhouse gases, the states of bird species, natural habitats and the animal and plant species, and ambient values of nitrogen deposition)</li>
</ul>

The Environmental Quality Decree of the Netherlands (Besluit kwaliteit leefomgeving, Bkl)

The Environmental Activities Decree of the Netherlands (Besluit activiteiten leefomgeving, Bal) contains government rules for activities in the physical environment, as applied to citizens and businesses.&nbsp;
The Decree regulates the basis for a specific ‘duty of care’ for environmentally harmful activities and discharge activities, including indicative designation and substantive rules for the processing of materials. The Decree also contains general rules, notification obligations, permit obligations, and customisation options, including for wind farms, buildings, discharge of domestic wastewater, marine dumping activity, and mining site activity. It also contains rules on trading in, and possession of timber or timber products with a view to combat climate change (EU Timber Regulation).&nbsp;

The Environmental Activities Decree of the Netherlands  (Besluit activiteiten leefomgeving, Bal)

The Environment Buildings Decree of the Netherlands (Besluit bouwwerken leefomgeving, Bbl) contains rules on construction, demolition,and the use and maintenance of buildings, in order to enhance the safety, health, sustainability, and operability of buildings. Together with the Environmental Activities Decree (Bal) this Decree updates the systematic approach to enhance energy efficiency by companies and institutions. One example of improving the sustainability of the built environment is the policy that all office buildings in the Netherlands require an energy label of C or better from 1 January 2023.&nbsp;
The Decree was first published in 2018, and amended later in 2023 in order to “make energy use more sustainable” as is stated to be “an important means to achieve the government’s emission reduction targets”. In the amendment, the following changes were made
<ul>
<li>The Energy Saving Obligation is broadened to an obligation to take measures to make energy use more sustainably. This means measures for on-site renewable energy production, and switching energy sources to one with lower carbon emissions will become mandatory if they have a payback period of no more than five years</li>
<li>The target group for the Energy Saving Obligation is expanded, this is done through declaring the energy-saving obligation applicable to environmentally harmful activities that require a permit, and by removing the exception in certain cases</li>
<li>Updates the information obligation to report on sustainable energy measures</li>
</ul>

The Environment Buildings Decree of the Netherlands  (Besluit bouwwerken leefomgeving, Bbl)

The implementation of the framework law, combining and repealing 26 existing laws into one single Act concerned with the "physical environment" leads to big legislative changes. In order to allow the succesful transition to the <span style="color: rgb(26,32,44);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol;">Environment and Planning Act, the Implementation Act and Implementation Decree are created.

The Environmental Quality Decree of the Netherlands (Besluit kwaliteit leefomgeving, Bkl)

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About the Environment and Planning Act of the Netherlands (Omgevingswet)