Environment : effects of public and private projects (amend. Directive 85/337/EEC)

The proposal was aimed at amending Directive 85/337/EEC on the assessment of the impact of certain public and private projects on the environment, in order firstly to take account of the results of the report on the implementation of the said Directive, which the Commission had presented to Parliament and the Council in 1993, and secondly to take into consideration the commitments undertaken by the Community and the Member States by the signing of the Espoo Convention on environmental impact assessment in a transboundary context. The proposal also responded to some of the recommendations contained in Parliament's resolution on agriculture and the environment, and in the Commission's communication on the same subject. In concrete terms the amendments essentially related to the following points: - the scope of those projects for which assessment was optional was to be specified at the discretion of Member States, in order to avoid both a total absence of assessment and a systematic assessment of smaller-scale projects; - the concept of defining the scope of the impact study (scoping) was introduced, in order to ensure that the information collected was more relevant; - a procedure for monitoring the environmental impact of the projects was introduced in order to allow those responsible to take the necessary reduction or compensation measures as soon as possible. �