Denmark’s national audit office, Rigsrevisionen, criticized the Danish Environmental Protection Agency on Monday over its control of marine fish farms and agricultural pesticide use, rating both areas strongly unsatisfactory.
The criticism was published on September 7, 2026, in two separate audit reports on the agency, known in Danish as Miljøstyrelsen. DR reports that the label corresponds to level three out of five on the audit office’s scale. That level is also defined as medium criticism.
TV 2 reports the same assessment for both the fish farm control and the pesticide control. Both outlets point to the two reports from Rigsrevisionen, which operates under the Danish Parliament, as the basis for the findings.
According to the reports, all 19 Danish marine fish farms, or havbrug, breached either legislation or the conditions of their permits. Rigsrevisionen counted 342 violations in the period between 2018 and 2025. In more than half of the cases, the same violation was repeated one or more times.
Of those cases, only 30 violations were actually enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, per the audit reports. Rigsrevisionen states that the agency cannot clearly explain what can be attributed to itself and what stems from other authorities and the complaints system.
Pesticide use based on self-reporting
On pesticide control, Rigsrevisionen writes that farm businesses’ use of pesticides is based exclusively on self-reported figures. Each individual business can therefore correct, delete, or entirely omit information about its own use.
According to the audit office, that means excessive amounts of pesticides can seep into the groundwater and end up in food. During inspection visits, the agency has only the farmers’ own spraying journals to work from.
Rigsrevisionen describes a specific weakness in that setup. An inspector may find half empty containers of illegal pesticides in storage. If the business has not recorded their use in the spraying journal, inspectors cannot prove it was used.
Permits pending for years
To farm fish in a Danish havbrug, an operator needs both a placement permit and an environmental approval. No Danish marine fish farm currently holds both documents, according to the reports.
Until they do, the farms can operate under more lenient permits issued in the 1990s. Rigsrevisionen states that this can increase pollution and damage the surrounding marine environment.
The agency itself estimates average case processing time for applications at between one and a half and two years. In practice, processing has taken 7 years for placement permits and 11 years for environmental approvals.
The findings were distributed by the news agency Ritzau and reported by both DR and TV 2 on Monday. Rigsrevisionen’s reports cover the agency’s supervision across the 2018 to 2025 period.
