The new Industrial Emissions Directive

The SEA and EIA procedures are very similar, but there are some differences:

• the SEA requires the environmental authorities to be consulted at the screening stage;
• scoping (i.e. the stage of the SEA process that determines the content and extent of the matters to be covered in the SEA report to be submitted to a competent authority) is obligatory under the SEA;
• the SEA requires an assessment of reasonable alternatives (under the EIA the developer chooses the alternatives to be studied);
• under the SEA, Member States must monitor the significant environmental effects of the implementation of plans/programmes in order to identify unforeseen adverse effects and undertake appropriate remedial action.
• the SEA obliges Member States to ensure that environmental reports are of a sufficient quality (cf. here).

According to Article 11 (1) of the SEA Directive, an environmental assessment carried out under this directive is without prejudice to any requirement under the EIA Directive. Consequently, an assessment carried out under the EIA Directive is in addition to one carried out under the SEA Directive. This also applies the other way around. The reason for this is the fact that the assessments under the EIA Directive and the SEA Directive differ from each other. It is therefore important to comply with the requirements of both directives.