Environmental Assessments in the EU’s environmental policy

Along with legislation on nature protection, environmental impact assessment was one of the first pieces of the EU environmental acquis. The original EIA Directive was already adopted in 1985 and applies to a wide range of defined public and private projects, which are detailed in its Annexes I and II. There is a difference between the procedure required for the projects classified in Annex I and II respectively.

All projects listed in Annex I are considered by the legislator to have significant effects on the environment given their nature and/or size, and hence require a mandatory EIA without further consideration of the circumstances of the project. This is the case, e.g., for large combustion plants (thermal power stations or other combustion installations with a heat output of more than 300 megawatts), nuclear plants, refineries, long-distance railway lines, motorways and express roads, airports with a basic runway length of 2100 meters or more, dams and large agro-industrial projects.

For projects listed in Annex II, the competent authorities in the Member States have the discretion to decide whether an EIA is necessary. This is done by the so-called "screening procedure", which determines the environmental effects of the project in question. This can be done either on the basis of thresholds, or on criteria set by the national transposing legislation, or a case-by-case examination by the competent authority. When setting the thresholds/criteria or carrying out the case-by-case examination, the competent authority must take into account the criteria laid down in Annex III of the Directive. A large number of projects listed in Annex II are identical to those in Annex I, however being under the threshold established therein) – in these cases, Annex II always specifies that those are “projects not included in Annex I” (e.g. combustion installations, agro-industrial installations, railways, roads, etc.) At the same time, there are certain projects which are only included in Annex II (e.g. hydropower plants, intensive fish farming, projects from the food industry, urban development projects).

The EIA Directive of 1985 has been amended three times, in 1997, in 2003 and in 2009:
Directive 97/11/EC brought the EIA Directive in line with the Espoo Convention by widening its scope and increasing the types of projects covered. It also provided for new screening arrangements, including new screening criteria (Annex III), and established minimum information requirements.

Directive 2003/35/EC aligned the provisions on public participation of the EIA Directive with the Aarhus Convention on public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters.

Directive 2009/31/EC amended Annexes I and II of the EIA Directive by adding projects related to the transport, capture and storage of carbon dioxide.

In 2011 the EIA Directive, together with its three amendments, was codified by Directive 2011/92/EU. Directive 2011/92/EU was further amended in 2014 by Directive 2014/52/EU (for detailed information on this amendment, please refer to Module 2).

The Directive establishes the EIA as a process that can be summarised as follows: the developer may request the competent authority to say what should be covered by the EIA information to be provided by the developer (scoping stage); the developer must provide information on the environmental impact of the project (EIA report); the environmental authorities and the public (including those of affected Member States) must be informed and consulted; the competent authority decides, taken into consideration the results of consultations. The public is informed of the decision afterwards and can challenge the decision before the courts.