In a judgment handed down on Thursday, 25 May, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the requirement to conduct an environmental impact assessment for an urban development project cannot exclusively depend on its size (Case C-575/21).
In Austria, a property developer brought an action for failure to act before the Administrative Court of Vienna, since the Austrian capital’s municipality did not respond to its request for a building permit to be issued so that it could undertake a commercial and tourist project (hotel, swimming pool, ice rink) with an area of 89,000 m2 on 1.55 ha located in the historic centre.
According to the developer, the project is not subject to the requirement to carry out an environmental impact assessment, in accordance with Directive 2011/92, because Austrian law imposes such a requirement only for projects whose land take exceeds 15 ha and with more than 150,000 m2 for such an requirement.
The Court of Justice—to which the Austrian courts referred the matter—is of the opinion that the directive is incompatible with Austrian law. In its view, if a Member State uses thresholds to assess the need for an environmental impact assessment, it is also necessary to take factors such as the location of projects into account by establishing, for example, several thresholds that correspond to various project sizes and apply based on their nature and location.
The Court [of Justice] points out that if the project, such as the one in question, is located in the central area of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the criterion relating to project location is particularly relevant.
The European court also indicates that before an environmental impact assessment is conducted for a building project or during the assessment, building permits cannot be granted for individual construction projects that are part of a larger urban development project.
See the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/736 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)