AUTHORS: Peter Hjerp

IEEP Analysis Briefing: Environmental Governance

The Commission has published a Communication on the application and effectiveness of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive. The Communication mentions the possibility of expanding the SEA Directive to cover policies and legislative proposals to better correspond to the scope of the SEA Protocol (which supplements the Espoo Convention on Environmental Impact Assessments in a transboundary context). The Communication also includes a section on the Commission’s experience of SEAs of Cohesion Policy Operational Programmes (Ops). Encouragingly the Commission has found that the SEAs have clearly influenced the content of OPs and that environmental authorities have been involved in the decision making procedures.