Institutional Strenghtening of the EIA System in Poland

Abstract

At the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Natural Resources and Forestry of Poland, work is under way on a new legal system for environmental impact assessments. It will be part of a new law on environmental impact assessment a draft of which is basically ready. Agreement between ministries and the legislative process at the National Assembly may take several years, therefore, it is well-advised to separate the part of the law which is concerned with environmental impact assessment as an individual act and to submit it to the legislative procedure as soon as possible. This necessity results from the following grounds: The present EIA system in Poland is not perfect and does not guarantee the necessary protection of environmental interests in investment processes. An example of this is the EIA procedure in the case of motorways. where, e.g., the investor’s imposition of localisation alternatives and the lack of regulations for public participation at the initial stages of the investment project preparation process cause numerous conflicts. Forthcoming new duties of the Ministry of Environment related to Strategic EA of so-called official documents do not even coincide with the present imperfect law. At some points the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessments in a Transboundary Context recently ratified by Poland is in contradiction with the law now in force, which, e.g., does not provide for public participation at the stage of seeking a decision concerning the determination of the terms of construction and land use. In view of the fact that the procedure for issuing agreement decisions on certain investment projects left to the discretion of officers of the environmental protection departments of voivodship offices, the present system is inefficient and difficult to control.