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Verband der Kali- und Salzindustrie e.V.

VKS

Verband der Kali- und Salzindustrie is the German trade association for the potash and salt mining industry.

Lobbying Activity

German salt industry demands removal of salt from organic rules

14 Nov 2025
Topic — Revising EU rules on organic logos and simplifying production requirements for various goods.
Message — VKS recommends that salt be completely removed from the list of certified organic products. They argue salt is an inorganic mineral, meaning organic principles are not reasonably applicable to its extraction.12
Why — This would ensure legal certainty for operators and prevent discrimination against European production methods.34
Impact — Organic food processors face disrupted supply chains and consumers are misled by the label.56
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Meeting with Pawel Wisniewski (Cabinet of Commissioner Christophe Hansen)

30 Sept 2025 · Introductory Meeting / Presentation of the potash fertilizers industry and its challenges.

German potash industry urges immediate inclusion in ETS compensation

5 Sept 2025
Topic — Update to EU rules allowing state aid for electricity-intensive industrial sectors.
Message — The association requests that potash mining and processing be added to the compensation list. They also advocate for 100% cost coverage and fewer environmental requirements for companies.123
Why — This aid would protect profit margins and competitiveness against cheaper non-European producers.4
Impact — Environmental progress may stall if requirements for green investments are significantly reduced.5
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Meeting with Adam Romanowski (Cabinet of Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič) and Association des Producteurs Europeens de Potasse

18 Jun 2025 · Potash industry in Europe

Meeting with Martin Hojsík (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur) and European Association of Mining Industries, Metal Ores & Industrial Minerals and

28 Apr 2025 · Soil monitoring law, mining areas

Meeting with Norbert Lins (Member of the European Parliament)

13 Mar 2025 · Vorschlag für eine Verordnung über die Einführung von Zöllen auf russische Düngemittel (INTA)

Meeting with Adam Romanowski (Cabinet of Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič), Dārta Tentere (Cabinet of Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič) and Association des Producteurs Europeens de Potasse

23 Jan 2025 · Exchange of views on the challenges faced by the European potash industry and possible ways to address them.

Meeting with Oliver Schenk (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and Deutscher Bauernverband

24 Sept 2024 · Soil Monitoring Law

Meeting with Michael Hager (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis)

11 Sept 2024 · challenges for the potash and salt industry

Meeting with Hildegard Bentele (Member of the European Parliament)

10 Sept 2024 · EU Industry and Environmental Policy

Meeting with Daniel Caspary (Member of the European Parliament)

10 Sept 2024 · Herausforderungen der Kali- und Salzindustrie

Meeting with Norbert Lins (Member of the European Parliament)

10 Sept 2024 · Exchange on relevant topics for the new legislative period

Response to Statistics on nutrients

7 May 2024

VKS (German Potash and Salt Association) welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback to the public consultation on the European Commissions draft regulation regarding statistics on nutrients. The German potash industry is the leading potash sector in Europe, counting for 85 % of Europes potash production (~ 7 million tonnes). The sector is leading in sustainable production and committed to climate neutrality and the EU principles for sustainable raw materials. Potash is a key nutrient for plants and ensures a resilient and sustainable agricultural production. Potash fertilisers are essential for food security and help farmers to improve yields and reduce negative effects of climate change on agricultural production. Moreover, there are no critical negative effects of potash fertilisation on the environment or biodiversity; especially in the water compartment, EU monitoring data has not shown negative impact for almost 150 years of mineral potash fertilizers. VKS supports the ambition of sustainable food systems and the farm to fork strategy. But the Commissions goal to generally reduce 20 % of fertilisers use (including potash) would contradict the strategy and risks agricultural productivity and food security. Therefore, VKS supports the Commissions goal to reduce nutrient losses by at least 50 %, but at the same an appropriate potash fertilisation adapted to the local situation without general reduction targets is crucial and must be possible. With regard to the proposed draft regulation on nutrients statistics, VKS would like to highlight the following concerns and the need for further discussion: Official statistics (Eurostat, Destatis) do not adequately cover the potash sector. It is widely known that Eurostat and Destatis data on potash are systematically wrong and do not sufficiently meet the reality of the sector. Therefore, professional stakeholders in the potash sector refer to private providers of statistical data, e.g. IFA or CRU. This issue is also on the agenda of the fertilisers market observatory group of the European Commission. Consequently, the official data is currently inappropriate to evaluate the targets of the farm to fork strategy for the potash sector. Therefore, VKS suggests to withdraw potash from the scope of the regulation on nutrients statistics and first of all set up a separate working group / work stream (composed of market experts and sector representatives) to identify the gaps of statistical data and find instruments to improve the statistical quality for the potash sector. Moreover, VKS suggest to review the 20 % fertilisers reduction target for the potash sector. For potash, this target does not provide environmental benefit but would have a significant negative impact on agricultural productivity and food security. VKS would welcome to provide further input about the potash sector and strongly asks for an extended exchange with the European Commission together with other sector experts from K+S AG and APEP (European Potash association).
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Meeting with Dennis Radtke (Member of the European Parliament)

21 Feb 2024 · Genereller Austausch

Meeting with Jens Geier (Member of the European Parliament)

15 Jan 2024 · Exchange on Soil Monitoring Directive

German Salt Industry Urges National Control Over Soil Standards

3 Nov 2023
Topic — This consultation addresses a legislative proposal for monitoring, managing, and restoring healthy EU soils.
Message — The VKS requests that existing mining and waste laws take precedence over the new directive. They demand excluding water and raw materials from the scope. They also advocate for soil health indicators to be set at the national level.123
Why — This would reduce compliance costs by preventing overlapping regulations and ensuring site-specific flexibility.45
Impact — Environmental groups lose the benefits of a single, high-standard European soil health regime.6
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Response to European Critical Raw Materials Act

30 Jun 2023

The German Potash and Salt Association (VKS) welcomes the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) to strengthen the European raw materials supply security. Potash and salt are key mineral raw materials for food security, extracted from underground deposits by conventional and solution mining techniques. Additionally to the priorities in the CRMA, the CRMA should also focus on food sovereignty and a secured supply of raw materials for the food supply chain. The EU fertiliser startegy, published on 9 November 2022, highlighted the need for secured fertiliser production in the EU and the reduction of high dependencies from Russia and Belarus. Consequently, potash (=key raw material for fertilisers) should be included in the list of EU strategic raw materials. Major producers and consumers of potash, like Canada and Brazil, already classified potash as "strategic" in their national strategies. The CRMA mainly focuses on making permitting procedures more efficient and faster, which is in fact a key challenge for mining activities in Europe. Moreover, the CRMA should also focus on providing a level-playing-field (reduction of regulatory burden, high energy and climate costs and excessive standards) for EU raw materials companies to ensure the competitiveness of the European raw materials production, especially when Non-EU-Countries produce at lower costs due to lower environmental, climate, health, labour and safety standards. Thus, strengthening the European raw materials production also means to improve the sustainability of raw materials . For more information see the attached document.
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German salt industry seeks broader waste recovery taxonomy rules

3 May 2023
Topic — The initiative defines sustainable economic activities for the EU's environmental investment classification.
Message — The association calls for the inclusion of more waste recovery technologies and the removal of restrictions. They suggest the rules should not exclude technical solutions like chemical transformation or metal recovery.123
Why — These changes would allow their specialized waste management and mining activities to access green financing.45
Impact — Environmental advocates lose stricter water quality targets and clear limits on waste incineration residues.67
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German Potash Industry Urges Flexible Carbon Removal Rules

22 Mar 2023
Topic — The European Commission is proposing a regulatory framework for certifying carbon removal activities.
Message — The organization calls for a distinct separation between carbon removals and reductions to ensure precise accounting. They also propose an operational definition of permanence to facilitate a faster transition for European farming systems.12
Why — Flexible certification standards would lower compliance barriers for the potash sector's agricultural products.3
Impact — Climate groups lose if permanence requirements are weakened during the proposed transition period.4
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Response to Detailed production methods for organic salts

19 Dec 2022

VKS represents the German Potash and Salt Producing Companies. Germany is Europes No.1 and Worlds No. 4 salt producing country. Four years after adoption of the EU Organic regulation 848/2018 the Commission failed to present a meaningful, consistent and applicable proposal for Organic Salt Production Rules. The Commissions Draft violates the objectives of the EU Organic Regulation, the salt sector itself opposes the Draft and also downstream customers, the organic sector and consumers are very critical about it. Therefore, VKS rejects the Commissions Draft Delegated Act on Organic Salt Production Rules and recommends to withdraw the Draft or exclude salt from the Organic Regulation. Further explanation: Salt is a key mineral for food and feed. Salt is not organic and therefore the logic and principles of the EU Organic Regulation can hardly be transferred on salt production. The Draft would de facto exclude all German rock salt and vacuum salt producers from becoming organic. Moreover, more than 90 % of Europes salt production would be excluded from organic. The EUs ambition of 25 % organic production will not be achievable at all under these circumstances. The Draft Production Rules are not consistent, not science-based and not justified, e.g. a conversation period does not make sense for a mineral product. The Draft clearly violates the EU Organic Regulations objective to encourage short distribution channels and local production in the various areas of the Union. The Draft would exclusively prefer a few sea salt producers in coastal areas which would lead to long distribution distances and high CO2-footprints. The Draft missed to provide rules an microplastics and other contaminants that typically occur in sea salt and play an important role in the perception of consumers regarding salt. The Draft prefers sea salt products that are 3 20 times more expensive than other salt products. Extremely high prices for organic food salt and feed salt will be a critical hurdle to expand supply and demand for organic salt products, so the Draft will implicate a lock-in effect that organic salt will remain a very small niche in the European salt production. In general, it is to criticize that the Have-Your-Say Feedback consultation period of four weeks (including Christmas and New Year Holiday) is too short to allow interested stakeholders to adequately participate in the consultation and provide substantial feedback. Regarding rock salt and vacuum salt, the Commissions Draft Production Rules also ignored major parts of the reports and recommendations of the Subgroup Salt of the Expert Group for Technical Advice on Organic Production. Moreover, it is to criticize that representatives of the rock salt and vacuum salt sector were not nominated for this Subgroup, whereas several representatives of sea salt companies were nominated that do neither have proven expertise in rock salt and vacuum salt production nor validated reputation in the field of rock and vacuum salt science. The organic salt debate at EU level is significantly influenced by lobby campaigns of artisanal sea salt producers that aim for exclusive market access and promotion for their products. The Organic Regulation should not be misused for such purposes especially when other EU policy instruments can provide more targeted solution to promote local products, e.g. Protection of Geographical Indications.
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Response to European Critical Raw Materials Act

25 Nov 2022

VKS (German Association of the Potash and Salt Industry) welcomes the initiative of the European Commission to secure raw materials supply for Europe. The Russian war against Ukraine, critical dependencies on raw materials supply from outside the EU and disrupted supply chains during the corona pandemic have highlighted the vulnerability of the European economy. The German potash and salt industry provides the strategic minerals POTASH and SALT for Europes industry, the agricultural sector and for consumers. The upcoming EU Raw Materials Act should strengthen the European potash and salt industry and should support strategic raw materials projects like the transformation of Europes biggest potash mine in Germany (project Werra 2060, 2023-2027).
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German Potash Industry Urges Exclusion From Industrial Emissions Rules

23 Jun 2022
Topic — The European Commission proposes extending industrial emission standards to include mining activities.
Message — The association rejects the blanket inclusion of mining in the industrial emissions directive. They suggest deleting the provision entirely or exempting potash and salt mining.12
Why — Exclusion would prevent significant administrative costs and avoid threats to facility operations.34
Impact — Environmental regulators lose the ability to apply harmonized best-practice pollution standards.5
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Meeting with Norbert Lins (Member of the European Parliament, Committee chair)

30 Mar 2022 · Biosalz

German potash industry urges continued eligibility for state aid

10 Dec 2020
Topic — Revision of European guidelines for state aid regarding energy and environmental protection.
Message — The association demands that potash and salt sectors remain eligible for state aid. They request extensive state funding for decarbonization investments and renewable electricity costs. It is essential that exemptions from renewable energy surcharges continue to be permitted.123
Why — This would protect domestic production costs against cheaper competitors from outside Europe.4
Impact — Non-European competitors lose their current price advantage over highly regulated German producers.5
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Meeting with Stefanie Hiesinger (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans) and K+S Aktiengesellschaft

16 Nov 2020 · Impact of a higher 2030 climate target on the potash industry and ETS-related aspects

Meeting with Rolf Carsten Bermig (Cabinet of Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska)

22 May 2018 · fertilizers