The new Industrial Emissions Directive

Scoping is the process of determining the content and extent of the matters which should be covered in the environmental information to be submitted to a competent authority for projects which are subject to EIA.

Pursuant to the EIA Directive, scoping is not a mandatory stage of the EIA directive but all Member States which do not have scoping in their EIA procedure are required to introduce, as a minimum, a voluntary scoping stage. The minimum requirement is that competent authorities must provide a Scoping Opinion if requested by a developer. The Scoping Opinion should identify the content and extent of the information to be elaborated and supplied by the developer to the competent authority. The directive also allows Member States to make scoping a mandatory part of their EIA procedure.

Scoping is an early stage in the process and is designed to ensure that the environmental studies provide all the relevant information on:

• the impact of the project, in particular focusing on the most important impacts;
• the alternatives to the project;
• any other matters to be included.

The findings of scoping define the ‘scope’ of the environmental information to be submitted to the competent authority and the terms of reference for the environmental studies to be undertaken to compile that information.