Forced to contradict

On Novem­ber 10, 2020, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends of the Ger­­man-Pol­ish Euro­pean Nation­al Park Unteres Oder­tal eV (Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion) lodged an objec­tion to the Land Reor­ga­ni­za­tion Plan, South I, at the State Office for Rur­al Devel­op­ment, Agri­cul­ture and Land Man­age­ment (LELF) in due form and in due time. The land con­sol­i­da­tion plan is clear­ly unlaw­ful, uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and immoral and vio­lates the nation­al park association’s rights. The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion was forced to take this step because the State Office for Land Reor­ga­ni­za­tion has not yet respond­ed to the association’s jus­ti­fied requests for changes. The objec­tion is now processed and decid­ed by the state office, lat­er by the high­est land reor­ga­ni­za­tion author­i­ty, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture. This deci­sion can then be sued at the High­er Admin­is­tra­tive Court in Berlin / Bran­den­burg. In addi­tion to the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion, fur­ther con­tra­dic­tions from the group of par­tic­i­pants in the land reor­ga­ni­za­tion are to be expected.

The main rea­son for the objec­tion for the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion is the attempt by the State Office — with­out ques­tion on the instruc­tions of the then Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture — to instruct the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion pre­dom­i­nant­ly in the eco­nom­i­cal­ly com­plete­ly worth­less and nature con­ser­­va­­tion-relat­ed total reserves (Zones Ia and b), but the State of Bran­den­burg itself as a pri­or­i­ty Zone II, which is eco­nom­i­cal­ly and in terms of nature con­ser­va­tion inter­est­ing, in which farm­ing can con­tin­ue and which is also intend­ed to serve the pro­tec­tion of biotopes and species. In doing so, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, accord­ing to its own writ­ten state­ment, want­ed to ruin the unpop­u­lar Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion eco­nom­i­cal­ly and deprive it of any design options in the Nation­al Park. The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion, on the oth­er hand, calls for its areas and exchange areas to be assigned pri­or­i­ty to Zone II (around 5,000 hectares, half of the Nation­al Park), and also to the areas of the core area of the large-scale nature con­ser­va­tion project that are out­side the nation­al park and that are as com­plete­ly closed as pos­si­ble the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion is oblig­ed to acquire. If there are still exchange areas of the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion, the Asso­ci­a­tion is of course ready to take over Zone I areas (total reserves).

As part of the land con­sol­i­da­tion and the free trans­fer of fed­er­al land for nature con­ser­va­tion pur­pos­es in the process area of land con­sol­i­da­tion, the state of Bran­den­burg has mas­sive­ly stocked up with areas that are com­plete­ly suf­fi­cient to trans­fer the entire reserve areas (zone Ia and b) into state own­er­ship. This is also the case across Ger­many, prac­ti­cal­ly with­out exception.

Nei­ther nature con­ser­va­tion nor agri­cul­ture would have to expect dam­age or dis­ad­van­tages from the solu­tion pro­posed by the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion, even if the Low­er Oder Val­ley land con­sol­i­da­tion pro­ce­dure in Bran­den­burg were to pro­ceed accord­ing to law, as in the fed­er­al land con­sol­i­da­tion act, but also in the Bran­den­burg land con­sol­i­da­tion act Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the let­ter of the Min­istry of the Inte­ri­or as expro­pri­a­tion author­i­ty from the year 2000 itself is express­ly record­ed. In any case, the nation­al park is only owned by the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, the only open ques­tion is: who will get Zone I (total reserves) and who will get Zone II (species and biotope pro­tec­tion)? For the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion, how­ev­er, it is the deci­sive, exis­ten­tial question.

The board of directors