Updated Friday 11am

The European Commission has opened an infringement procedure against Malta over its implementation of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regulations.
 
EIAs are environmental studies carried out as part of a development permit application, to ensure that the effect on the environment is properly assessed before a project is approved by the Planning Authority. 

The studies are open to public consultation and have been subject to new EU regulations since 2014, which the Commission says Malta has failed to properly implement in full.

The key issues flagged by the Commission were the “incorrect enactment of public information and consultation requirements, and incorrect national provisions of requirements on the content of development consent”.

The Maltese government now has two months to respond to the Commission’s arguments, failing which it could be sent a reasoned opinion, the next step in the infringement process. 

The Commission, in its monthly package of infringement decisions, announced similar procedures against Estonia and Hungary, including over overly-wide exemptions from conducting EIAs, inadequately dissuasive fines, and the potentially prohibitive cost of court procedures for NGOs.

The Environment Ministry and the Environment and Resources Authority confirmed on Friday that they would be evaluating the points raised by the Commission.

What is an Environmental Impact Assessment?

The EIA procedure, which is overseen by the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA), is intended to assess and predicts likely significant environmental impacts of a proposed development, and is also open to public consultation.

It is usually required for major developments, or developments in sensitive locations, but can be requested whenever the ERA believes there may be significant environmental impacts that will not be sufficiently addressed in the normal application process.

Changes to the EIA process were introduced under a 2014 EU directive transposed into Maltese law in 2017. 

The changes introduced new topics including human health, climate change, and vulnerability to major accidents or disasters into the assessment process.

They also aim to make EIA reports more understandable to the public, particularly with regards to assessments of the current state of the environment and alternatives to the proposal in question, including a comparison of environmental effects between different options.