The Council of the EU would like the process for the authorisation regime for defence infrastructure projects to be longer than the deadlines proposed by the European Commission, according to a draft compromise text from the Secretariat-General of the EU Council dated 13 November, obtained by Agence Europe.
If, as proposed by the Commission on 17 June (see EUROPE 13661/6), the Secretariat-General agrees that the project authorisation procedure, including the issue of the corresponding authorisation, should not exceed 60 days, then it would like the period for checking the completeness of the permit application to be extended from 15 to 20 days. The same deadline is also proposed for a second incomplete application (compared to 15 days suggested by the European Commission).
In addition, while the European Commission proposes that “in exceptional cases”, where the nature, complexity, location or scale of the proposed defence preparation project so requires, a Member State may, on a case-by-case basis, extend the time limits on one occasion by a maximum of 30 days before they expire, or by 60 days in the case of risks to the health and safety of workers and the general public, the compromise text deletes the notion of exceptional cases and proposes that a “competent authority” may extend the period once or several times, “for a maximum of 90 days”. “In such case, the total duration of the permit-granting process shall not exceed 150 days”, the document states.
In addition, the compromise text proposes that there need not necessarily be a single authority as a single point of contact, but that there could be several. “Each Member State shall establish or designate one or more authorities as single point of contact at the relevant administrative level”, the text states, explaining that “Member States should be able, in light of their internal organisation, to choose whether to establish or designate their single points of contact at local, regional or national level, or at any other relevant administrative level”.
See the document: https://aeur.eu/f/ji7 (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant with Anne Damiani)