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Amendments to Law on EIA Passed to Second Reading
Wednesday 10 February 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, February 10 (TASR) - Legislative amendments to the law on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which should give the general public a bigger say in decision-making, were passed to their second reading in Parliament on Wednesday.
The Environment Ministry claims that it has included all the European Union's demands, and the amendment is due to be passed by February 15 - within the time limit laid down by the EU. The amendments, which were passed by the Government at an extraordinary session on Friday, are being dealt with via a fast-tracked procedure.
The move is designed to prevent Slovakia from losing EU funds over extraordinary legislative measures taken to usher in the fast-tracked construction of motorways via a private-public partnership (PPP) funding arrangement passed in 2007, which limited citizens' rights to a say in decisions concerning motorway construction and their environment. This was found to be at odds with EU legislation.
The most important change is that the general public and civil initiatives will be able to have an input in the process of approving motorways. [At the moment, the authorities responsible for decision-making are not obliged to deal with public objections. MPs also decided to exclude people from decision-making in all projects in which environmental impacts are assessed. - ed. note].
Opposition Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) MP Maria Sabolova criticised the need to deal with the bill via a fast-tracked procedure, pointing out that such haste could have been avoided if the EU's objections had been dealt with in September 2009, when they were first presented.
Several environmentalist NGOs claim that the amendment doesn't fully transpose EU's regulations in a comprehensive way, pointing to specific points that need to be corrected as they don't meet the EU's requirements to the full. According to Juraj Rizman from Greenpeace, MPs ought to be able to correct this error very easily and prevent Slovakia from getting into more trouble. "We all know that the Government prepared this amendment quickly and without public discussion. Despite the fact that we have reservations towards the way in which this amendment was passed by the Government, we want to help," he added.
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