Environmental Assessments and Authorizations: SEA - EIA - IPPC Permit

Each year the Ministry of the Environment issues a hundred of EIA provisions (EIA and EIA Screening). The prescriptive framework of each measure contains an average of 15-20 requirements for specific aspects of the various environmental components, aspects of planning and management, monitoring, mitigation and compensation measures.

Based on the experience gained in recent years, a number of difficulties have been recognized both by the developers in the implementation of the requirements and by the Directorate- General for Environmental Assessment and the Technical Committee of the Environmental Impact Assessment EIA/SEA in the verification of the requirements’ compliance. The main causes are related to the unclear and ineffective wording of the prescription in terms of procedures and timing for implementation, and to the great number of prescriptions and the parties involved. These problems often involve requests for clarification and the implementation of further proceedings with consequent lengthening of ordinary timing required by the issuance of the final provision, leading in some cases to the impossibility to proceed with the implementation and/or verification of the compliance of the prescription itself.

To help overcome these problems, the Directorate-General for Environmental Assessment of the Ministry of the Environment in consultation with the Technical Committee for Environmental Impact Assessment EIA/SEA and with the support of ISPRA, has developed specific Guidelines for the preparation of prescriptive frameworks of EIA decisions, based on the analysis a significant number of prescriptive frameworks of EIA decisions issued in the period 2000-2010.

The Guidelines are official reference for the formulation of prescriptive frameworks for EIA provisions (EIA and EIA Screening) under state jurisdiction.