Environmental organisations Mobilisation for the Environment (MOB) and Vereniging Leefmilieu have said they will start 10 legal procedures a week against farmers who have been operating without a licence since the last government’s nature permit regime was outlawed in 2019.

Around 2,500 businesses, the majority of them livestock farmers, were told they did not need a nature permit if they wanted to extend their operations, as long as they monitored and reported how much extra nitrogen pollution they caused in the surrounding area.

Caretaker agriculture minisiter Femke Wiersma had proposed giving a further three-year amnesty to so-called “PAS-melders”, businesses who were caught out when judges threw out the previous system but was told to “rethink” the plan by the Council of State.

The organisations now want to put pressure on the government by starting weekly legal action focusing on ten farms which have been operating illegally through no fault of their own and which may have to get rid of part of their livestock.

The first 10 procedures will affect farms in Limburg, followed by Gelderland, Friesland and other provinces.

The organisations will also ask provincial authorities to withdraw the licenses of mega stables and other so-called “peak polluters”.

MOB spokesman Johan Vollenbroek said the organisations are open to talks about a period of grace for farmers but “only in combination with a real solution to the nitrogen pollution problem.”