Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been the cornerstone of a preventive European Community (EC) environmental policy since the 1970s and successive Environmental Action Programmes. Agreement of the EIA Directive 8513371 EEC in 1985, with implementation required by July 1988, heralded, many hoped, a new era. While undoubtedly it has brought significant improvements in the provision of environmental information to decision-making, the recent review of the Directive has highlighted a number of problems and difficulties with implementation in Member States. Current proposals by the European Commission seek to remedy some of these, and include improved and early scoping and more consistent screening of projects requiring EIA. However, the prospect of even the Commission's modest proposals being accepted by the Council of Ministers is anything but a foregone conclusion. Welcome though they are, these amendments will do nothing to extend EZA to more strategic decision-making at policy, plan and programme level - strategic environmental assessment (SEA) - even though SEA is a central tenet of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme. A quarter of a century after the introduction of EIA and SEA in the US, the European Union is still struggling with the practical implications of one of its most important environmental policies.
European Energy and Environmental Law Review