Brussels, 12/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the Environment Council managed to come to an unanimous political agreement on the directive relating to public participation in environmental plans and programmes in order to allow it to intervene at an early stage of the decision-making process, to make observations that the authorities will have to take into account, and to be informed of such decisions. The text of the agreement, which came rapidly after the integration of one third of the Parliament amendments, aims to transpose into Community law the provisions of the second pillar of the Aarhus Convention on access to information, public participation in the decision-making process and access to justice regarding environmental issues, and in order to complete two existing directives already containing provisions on public information and consultation. The directives in question are Directive 85/337/EEC concerning environmental impact assessment for certain public and private projects (major construction works and landscape intervention) and Directive 96/61/EC (the so-called IPPC Directive) relating to the integrated prevention and reduction of pollution due to large scale industrial activity. The public right of participation will come under these two directives, but also under the directives on waste management, batteries and accumulators, the protection of water against nitrate pollution and the management of air quality.
Contrary to requests made by the Commission, the Council did not wish for the right of public participation to be guaranteed when updating permits issued under the IPPC directive. Public information and consultation would therefore continue to bear exclusively on the issuance of authorisations before installations start up and during their operation. The Commission considers that, on this point, the Council's political agreement runs counter to the provisions of the Aarhus Convention that the Union is preparing to ratify. It therefore reserves itself the right to come back to the text after the second reading by Parliament, in the hope that the latter will restore the provision deleted.
After consolidation of the text of the political agreement, the Council's "common position" will be formally adopted without debate during an upcoming session in order to be forwarded to the Parliament.