Judges of the EU countries are trained in field of environmental law

Rudite Vidusa, the senator of the Department of Administrative Cases of the Senate and Linda Vinkalna and Ilze Amona, judges of Administrative regional court enlarged understanding about sense of environmental impact assessment and particular nuances of its regulation in seminar about the European Union’s environmental impact assessment law.

The seminar took place between the 14^th and 16^th of March in Omsenie, Slovakia, in the Judicial Academy of the Slovak Republic. It was organised by the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) with support of the European Commission, and it was one of events (modules) in programme “Support for judges of the European Union member states in field of environmental law”.

The programme of the seminar is planned like pilot training. Its ground is newly created training pack in field of European Union’s environmental law which is planned to be made freely available to those, who deal with application of environmental law daily, also to judges. The senator Vidusa, who specialised in environmental law in the Department of Administrative cases of the Senate, visited also module about waste management law of the European Union last year.

The seminar about European Union’s environmental impact assessment law was managed by experts of this field of law from European Institute of Public Administration, French Administrative Court Montreuil, and the Directorate-General for the Environment of the European Commission.

Participants were acquainted with general review about legal regulation: place of the EU environmental impact assessment law in law of the European Union, particularity of the field, procedures implemented by the European Union (Commission and Court) in application of law, statistics and its assessment on state violation processes and prejudicial issues.   

Two legal standards were analysed in detail, namely, the Directive 85/337/EEK of the European Council about environmental impact assessment of some public and private projects and the Directive 2001/42/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment.

Main definitions of directives and problematic issues of their understanding identified in the practice of member states and in cases of the Court of Justice of the European Union were explained. Scope of regulation of each directive (in the first case the environmental impact assessment of concrete projects, in the second case – environmental impact strategic assessment of political planning documents, plans and programmes) was clarified and regulation of both directives has been compared.

Discussion about so called screening decisions (initial environmental impact assessment) was especially explored. However, reasons of why it is difficult for member states to adopt screening decisions and make an assessment of the rule of law are observed and nuances of understanding of several definitions are explained.  

Separate part was devoted to rights of society to participate in process of environmental impact assessment and environmental impact strategic assessment. This process was evaluated in relation to the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, as well as directives of the European Union, which partially transpose the Convention in the law of the European Union.  

The representative of the Directorate-General for the Environment of the European Commission presented assessment of aspect on legal regulation (strong and weak points of directives), development of legal regulation according to imperfections stated in practice, designed by the Commission. Environmental impact assessment in projects with cross-border impact (for example, building of nuclear power station by the state border), shortage of corresponding legal regulation and ways of use of existing regulation in procedure of assessment of such projects were considered to be especially topical in the future.

Great attention was paid to cases of the European Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union, in which legal standards related to environmental impact assessment were interpreted.

Significant part of the seminar was work in groups, solving several cases. It was necessary to ground solution in arguable situations related to direct impact of the directive on environmental impact assessment, adoption of initial decision about environmental impact assessment, rights of society to participate in process of environmental impact assessment and feasibility of application of the directive on Environmental impact assessment in cases of cross-border impact.  

In the end of the seminar useful references to sources were given on further research and data base about practice on application of directives, maintained by the European Commission and participants received study materials prepared by lecturers. Mutual experience exchange about peculiarities in legal regulation of member states and concrete cases in courts of member states was also valuable.

Issues of environmental impact assessment, especially validity of screening decisions may be the ones, which should be assessed in administrative proceedings, so knowledge gained is important and of practical use. Experience in solving legal contentions in work groups, as well as solutions prepared by lecturers that were issued later, may serve while solving similar issues in Latvian case-law, as well as exchanging knowledge with colleagues in administrative courts.

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, the Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court