Changes are coming to the environmental decision-making procedure

The Ministry of Climate and Environment is working on new regulations for issuing environmental decisions. The amendment is expected to streamline the administrative procedure and remove current interpretative doubts. According to a communiqué in the Government's legislative work list, the draft law may be adopted by the Council of Ministers as early as Q3 2025.Project no: UD224.

The amendment will change the rules for issuing environmental decisions

In the last days of April, the climate and environment ministry announced that it was working on a draft amendment to the law regulating the procedure for issuing environmental decisions. Planned changes are to concern mainly the environmental decisions required for investments that have a significant impact on the environment.

As the government website reads, the need to amend the legislation is due to:

the need to improve the quality of environmental impact assessment procedures, seal and streamline the system, identified during the review of existing legislation and identified problems in the application of current legislation.

The amendment is intended to cover almost all aspects of issuing environmental decisions, from the parties to the proceedings, through the applications and the authorities competent to issue the decision, to issues relating to the use of the decision issued.

For the moment only the aims and objectives of the proposed legislation are known. The bill is scheduled to be adopted by the government in Q3 2025.

Electronic applications will go to the district chiefs

The amendment provides for the introduction of an obligation to submit applications for environmental decisions only in electronic form. At the same time there will be a reduction in the number of annexes that the applicant or his/her representative must provide on paper.

This is not the end of the story - the competence of the authorities will also change. Currently, the competence to issue a decision is dispersed - depending on the type of project, the application is submitted to the head of the municipality, mayor or city president. Ultimately, their tasks are to be taken over by the starost. The Ministry of the Environment and Ecology argues that the move is intended to improve the quality of the proceedings. The possibility of delegating cases to the RDEP other than those arising from local jurisdiction will also disappear. As a reminder, until now, the regional directorates with the heaviest workloads were able to transfer some of the pending applications to directorates in other regions.

Consultative and conciliatory bodies with extended competences

The IOC also aims to ensure that the bodies involved in the opinion can subsequently comment on the changes and new solutions introduced during the environmental impact assessment. Furthermore, the authorities will have the opportunity to indicate a different variant of the investment than that proposed by the investor. Currently, they are only entitled to such an entitlement if the option chosen by the developer is not feasible.

The amendment also provides for clarification of the scope of documents to be submitted to the authorities providing opinions and consultations. The body responsible for drafting the document subject to strategic environmental assessment will have to make the results of the monitoring carried out available to the authorities which were involved in the opinion and agreement in the strategic assessment and to the public.

Clarification of the catalogue of parties to proceedings and broader public participation

The amendment to the Act also aims to remove doubts of interpretation concerning, inter alia, the parties to the proceedings and participants on the rights of a party. In addition, the Ministry of Climate and Environment plans to clarify which rights in rem (ownership, lease, usufruct) should be taken into account when determining the catalogue of parties. We are therefore likely to see a closed the catalogue of entities which may be parties to proceedings for an environmental decision.

A significant improvement will be increasing the number of parties subject to the use of notice by public notice. Such a change is intended to allow for more frequent, direct service of notices to parties concerning proceedings.

The amended legislation is also intended to enable the public to participate more widely in the proceedings. In specific situations (if the nature of the case warrants it), it will be possible to extend the deadline for the submission of comments and applications by the public. At the same time, the body competent to conduct the environmental impact assessment will be exempted from the obligation to consider comments and applications received after the set deadline.

New rules for old environmental decisions - what can be expected?

The assumptions of the draft amendment also provide for the introduction of provisions regulating the use of environmental decisions already issued.

• Withholding a decision or revoking immediate enforceability means stopping the investment

An important piece of information for investors is the planned change to the effects of withholding an environmental decision and revoking the rigour of immediate enforceability. Under the proposed regulations, both of these situations will involve the necessity to suspend investment works to the extent that they are reflected in the decision on environmental conditions.

• Extension of the validity of the environmental decision

The authorities are to be guided by the same standardised criteria when extending the expiry date of the decision to confirm the validity of the conditions for implementing the project.

• Validity of the decision independent of ownership rights

In order to avoid non-compliance with the obligations arising from environmental decisions by new owners of installations, the IOC plans to widen the circle of entities obliged to comply with these obligations and to ensure statutory continuity of compliance, independent of changes in ownership and the degree of implementation of the project.

Source: Draft Act amending the Act on providing information on the environment and its protection, public participation in environmental protection and environmental impact assessments, as well as certain other acts, https://www.gov.pl/web/premier/projekt-ustawy-o-zmianie-ustawy-o-udostepnianiu-informacji-o-srodowisku-i-jego-ochronie-udziale-spoleczenstwa-w-ochronie-srodowiska-oraz-o-ocenach-oddzialywania-na-srodowisko-oraz-niektorych-innych-ustaw8