Environmental Assessments in the EU’s environmental policy

As a result, the Espoo Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context was adopted on 25 February 1991, followed by the Convention’s signature by the European Community (now European Union) and twenty-nine States in the period up to 2 September 1991. The Convention was opened for ratification, acceptance, approval and accession from 3 September 1991. The Convention entered into force ninety days after the sixteenth ratification (Poland, 12 June 1997) on 10 September 1997. The Convention, following its first amendment in 2001, is also open to accession by UN Member States that are not members of the UNECE.

In the 1992 Rio Declaration, the UN General Assembly also embraced and endorsed the precautionary principle by stating that “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

In the sphere of public participation (one of the key elements of environmental assessments), the Aarhus Convention was adopted at the Fourth “Environment for Europe” Ministerial Conference in Aarhus, Denmark, on 25 June 1998. It entered into force on 30 October 2001. Currently, the Convention has 47 Parties from the UNECE region, comprising 46 countries and the EU.

With regard to strategic environmental assessment, the Kyiv Protocol was adopted at an extraordinary meeting of the Parties to the Espoo Convention on 21 May 2003 during the ‘Environment for Europe’ Ministerial Conference. Thirty-six States and the European Community (now EU) signed the Protocol, with Montenegro later succeeding to signature. The Protocol entered into force on 10 July 2010.