Survey on the implementation of the environmental information directive in EU Member States

Abstract

The Directive on public access to environmental information (2003/4/EC; AEI-Directive, The European Commission, 2003-1), forms a cornerstone of the European Union’s environmental policy. It requires member states to progressively make available environmental information and disseminate it to the public in order to achieve the widest possible systematic availability and dissemination. The AEI-Directive has been in effect for 6 years now. In the context of the EU FP7 Project “ICT-ENSURE” a survey was conducted on the state of implementation of the AEI-Directive in member states (The European Commission, 2008-2). This paper summarizes the results of this study, which is essentially based on an internet survey. Moreover, following this survey, a questionnaire has been completed in advance for each country which was sent to the publication departments of the Ministries of Environment of the EU 27 for review, correction and completion. Until today 22 countries have responded, 19 of which sent back the reviewed questionnaires. The study shows that all member states use the internet as the main distribution tool for environmental information. Legislation for free access to environmental information is in effect in the majority of the countries. More than 50% transposed the AEI-Directive into national legislation. Germany seems to be the only country which developed a special information system for the implementation of the directive. Furthermore, the study proved that, due to the language barrier, access to environmental information is in most cases restricted to the national level. In conclusion it can be affirmed that the current lack of organisational, technical and semantic harmonisation and interoperability makes it almost impossible to access environmental information on a supra-national level.