POLICY AND POLITICS
We support governments to develop and implement ambitions, policies and standards. Governments increasingly need professional and independent knowledge partners to be able to formulate answers to complex societal challenges and to support initiatives. In addition, our task is to maintain, strengthen or renew the knowledge base for the government in several important public areas.
IMPACT: COVID-19
TNO developed a fast, cheap and reliable corona test that is able to detect the COVID-19 virus within an hour. Being able to determine more quickly whether a person is infected is vital to effectively control the infection in the population. The development in collaboration with the GGD Amsterdam, RIVM, DSM, LUMC and UMCG is intended for the Ministry of VWS (public health), which commissioned the project that was funded by ZonMW as an urgent research project.
IMPACT: Nitrogen emission and deposition in the Netherlands
On 29 May 2019, the Council of State ruled that the Dutch nitrogen legislation and related policy ("Integrated Approach to Nitrogen") was in conflict with the European Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC). This forced the Dutch government to introduce new legislation and policy regarding nitrogen emissions in agriculture, traffic and industry. TNO has written a fact sheet about nitrogen emissions and deposition in the Netherlands in response to several questions TNO received from the Committee on Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) of the House of Representatives of the States-General.