The European Commission is going to the Court of Justice of the European Union with a lawsuit against the Portuguese state. It is an aggravation of the infringement procedure initiated in 2019.
The European Commission alleges that Portugal has poorly transposed the directive defining the criteria for determining which public and private works should be subject to an environmental assessment before the start of the construction phase.
Brussels believes that Portugal has not correctly transposed some provisions of a directive on the assessment of the environmental impact of public and private construction projects.
According to the directive, “major construction or development projects launched in the EU should first be assessed for their impact on the environment.
The aim is to ensure the reduction of administrative burdens and the improvement of the level of environmental protection while making companies’ decisions on public and private investments more robust, predictable and sustainable.
But according to the way it is enshrined in Portuguese law, the number of projects exempted from environmental impact assessment is higher than what is defined in the directive.
In addition, experts from the Commission say that Portuguese law does not take full account of the criteria set out in European legislation to determine whether or not certain projects should be subject to an environmental assessment.
The directive was amended in 2014 and Member States had three years to properly transpose it into national law.
In 2019, the European Commission informed the Portuguese government of the delay through a warning letter. And in 2021, it sent a reasoned opinion.
Brussels emphasizes that “the Portuguese authorities have not fully responded to the questions raised” and now considers that “national efforts” to adopt the European law “have so far been unsatisfactory and insufficient”.
For this reason, the executive, headed by Ursula von der Leyen, has now decided to aggravate the procedure before the Court of Justice of the European Union with a lawsuit against the Portuguese state.
Source: DN
