Until 19 September, there's an opportunity to comment on the proposed amendment — including as a private individual:
Ministerial draft law: Ministerial draft concerning the Federal Act amending the Environmental Impact Assessment Act 2000
Objectives
- Ensuring conformity with EU law
- Speeding up procedures for energy transition projects
- Increasing procedural efficiency through better structuring of proceedings and clearer requirements regarding the depth of assessment, with the option of online or hybrid hearings
- Taking into account the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, land use and soil sealing of a project in the EIA
- Protecting biodiversity through effective regulations regarding the conduct of EIAs and EIA screening procedures
- Ensuring the EIA obligation for projects with significant environmental impacts
- Simplifying enforcement for certain projects, in particular clarifications on case-by-case assessments
- The EIA Act generally contributes to minimising the environmental impacts of larger projects and pursues the goal of optimising such environmentally relevant undertakings.
Content
- Procedural adjustments, inter alia due to pending EU infringement proceedings relating to the EIA Directive and due to supreme court case law (design of access to courts, timetable, party status of citizens' initiatives)
- Accelerating the approval of energy transition projects by establishing overriding public interest, excluding suspensive effect for insufficiently substantiated complaints, introducing flexibility for changes to approvals, avoiding duplicate assessments regarding the landscape, enabling financial compensation for environmental interventions, and speeding up the approval of wind turbines through requirements in cases of missing zoning designations
- Increasing procedural efficiency by structuring proceedings, such as prioritising environmental impacts, setting options for deadlines, and enabling online and hybrid hearings
- Further detailing of approval conditions with regard to climate protection and reducing land consumption
- Adjustments to the facts of the case in Annex 1 based on case law and the pending infringement proceedings No. 2019/2224 relating to the EIA Amendment Directive
Main aspects of the draft
The present draft is intended to implement elements of the government programme, in particular necessary adjustments due to pending EU infringement proceedings relating to the EIA Directive and due to supreme court case law.
Furthermore, the requirements of climate protection and reducing land consumption are to be addressed through more precisely formulated approval conditions.
The expansion of renewable energies and the necessary grid infrastructure is considered essential and is to be actively promoted. Facilitations for these types of projects are therefore to be provided — while maintaining a high level of environmental protection.
Editorial team: oesterreich.gv.at
As of: 25.07.2022
- Brief summary / PDF, 51 KB
- Covering letter / PDF, 734 KB
- Legislative text / PDF, 157 KB . HTML, 157 KB
- Cover sheet and impact-oriented assessment / PDF, 111 KB . HTML, 111 KB
- Explanatory notes / PDF, 274 KB . HTML, 274 KB
- Comparative text / PDF, 425 KB . HTML, 425 KB
Submitted by: Leonore Gewessler, BA Government member, Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology
