Environmental Agency Criticized for Poor Environmental Oversight

Denmark’s Environmental Protection Agency is facing sharp criticism over its control of marine farms and agricultural pesticide use. The National Audit Office and parliamentary auditors described both areas as “highly unsatisfactory.”

Mette Abildgaard, chair of the parliamentary auditors, said the oversight was not good enough and called pesticide controls deeply worrying. Auditor Mikkel Sarbo said the shortcomings in marine-farm inspections had direct consequences for the marine environment and could affect public health.

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Let me put it plainly: this is not good enough. The parliamentary auditors find the Environmental Protection Agency’s and the ministry’s control of pesticide use deeply worrying.

The audit found that all 19 Danish marine farms violated laws or permit conditions 342 times between 2018 and 2025. More than half of the violations were repeated at least once, but the Environmental Protection Agency enforced only 30 of them.

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It is completely inadequate and has direct consequences for our marine environment and potentially for our health.

Pesticide monitoring depends exclusively on companies’ own declarations. Farmers can correct, delete or omit information about their pesticide use. Inspectors also rely on farmers’ spraying records during visits. The audit said inspectors might find half-empty containers of illegal pesticides, but could not prove their use if the company had not recorded it.

The auditors also criticized agricultural IT systems, including software that merely displays a small warning when a user is about to report an illegally high level of pesticide use. Marine farms must have both a location permit and an environmental approval, yet no Danish marine farm has both. Until they do, farms can operate under more lenient permits dating from the 1990s, which the audit says may increase pollution and harm nearby marine environments. Although the agency estimates applications should take 18 to 24 months, processing has so far taken seven years for location permits and 11 years for environmental approvals.

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The inspector can find half-empty containers of illegal pesticides in the warehouse, but if the company has not recorded in its spraying log that the pesticides were used, inspectors cannot prove it.