Debate: Environment: The Aarhus Regulation
Date: WEDNESDAY, 19 MAY 2021
Speaker: Virginijus Sinkevičius
Language: EN

The Aarhus Convention links government accountability and environmental protection and thus goes to the heart of the relationship between people and governments. Access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters are more important than ever. I’m therefore pleased to see the progress made by Parliament on the Commission’s proposal to revise the Aarhus Regulation. This week’s plenary vote is a key step in the legislative process. The timetable is very demanding and swift progress is essential.  We need to ensure that a political agreement on the legislative amendment can be reached on time, and ideally before the summer break, to allow us to present the results of the meeting of the parties to the Aarhus Convention in October 2021. This should bring a longstanding discussion on the EU’s compliance with the Aarhus Convention to an end.  The amendments tabled today by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety are very ambitious. While the key objective is to accommodate all four key recommendations made by the Compliance Committee in its advice of 12 February, some amendments, however, go beyond the committee’s advice and address elements unrelated to the case that triggered the review of the Aarhus Regulation. As usual, at this stage of the legislative procedure, the Commission reserves its position to take into account the outcome of Parliament’s plenary vote, as well as the upcoming discussions in the Council. We will then define our position for the trilogue negotiations at a later stage, once we know where both co-legislators stand so that we can play our role as honest broker in the most effective way.  However, I want to share some comments and concerns with you already as regards a number of amendments proposed in your report, and draw your attention to their far-reaching implications.  With such an important and complex file, we need to clearly understand the exact implications of the changes we propose, as some of them may significantly impact the EU institutions and the functioning of the whole EU legal order. We all agree that our goal is to ensure compliance with the EU’s international obligations under the Aarhus Convention. Better engagement with the public is also essential to the success of the European Green Deal. If we want to deliver lasting change, the public needs to remain a driving force in the transition.  Across the EU, environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play a vital advocacy role, and as Commissioner, I witness very directly the key role that NGOs play every day when it comes to monitoring the good implementation of EU environmental law. Under the Commission’s original proposals, NGOs would have even broader possibilities to exercise their role as watchdogs. Acts on the EU institutions would be opened up for review under many policy areas, including the environment, transport infrastructure and major energy projects. The expansion would bring sweeping changes to the current system and new opportunities to hold the EU institutions to account.  The importance of the proposed changes cannot be emphasised too highly. Taken together with the priority actions outlined in the Commission communication on access to justice in environmental matters, we are confident that these proposed changes by the Commission, as long as they respect the features of the EU legal order, would be the best way to comply fully and effectively with the requirements of the Aarhus Convention. At the meeting of the parties in October, we must stand united. We must be able to show the progress we have achieved, but it will also be important to be firm where specificities and fundamental principles of the EU legal order need to be taken into account, and where, simply put, the Aarhus Regulation is not the right tool to bring about further change. In the interest of effective access to justice and of a timely and successful conclusion of our legislative negotiations, I am convinced that it will be important to focus on issues that have been raised by the Compliance Committee in its findings and advice, to consider and respect the specificities and fundamental principles of the EU legal order, and to remain realistic. This means to consider the practical implications and the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposals.  Let’s be very clear: in a European Union with a population of almost 450 million, the practical consequences of opening up the review process, free of charge to each and every individual, are far-reaching. There is a genuine risk that the system will be unable to cope and that effective case handling becomes impossible. There is also a risk of not being able to establish clear, fair and non-discriminatory criteria to distinguish between those who should and those who should not have access to a review procedure, and the proposed use of delegated acts in this regard raises at least certain institutional and legal questions.  I hope we can all agree that the EU institutions and the Court of Justice should not spend taxpayers’ money on dealing with huge numbers of inadmissible requests. They should focus on substance, but let me emphasise that this is more than just a legal or practical discussion. It is an extremely political one as well. As you know, the current budget does not allow an increase in the human resources of the Commission. Any reallocation of resources would only be possible from other parts of the Commission, and any new tasks would require internal redeployments and the identification of negative priorities elsewhere. We have to take this constraint into account and avoid that this review has a negative impact on other tasks of the Commission that are crucial to deliver on our joint priorities, and here I’m thinking of both policy-related tasks and horizontal tasks such as implementation and enforcement. This is not an easy file, but it is a very important one, and we have a shared responsibility to deliver. I am looking forward to continuing our joint work on this file so that together we can bring the revision of the Aarhus Regulation to a successful and timely conclusion. The Commission stands ready to assist the co-legislators in this process. Thank you very much for your attention.