The guidelines have been adopted that close the infringement procedure for the correct transposition of Directive 2011/92/EU
15/04/2015 – The Ministerial Decree of 30 March 2015 containing the guidelines has been published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale
for the verification of the applicability of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to the projects
under the responsibility of the regional and autonomous provincial authorities.
The aim of the guidelines is to ensure uniform application of Directive
2011/92/EU on national territory.
As stated in the decree, the verification of the applicability of environmental impact assessment
assesses whether a project may have significant negative impacts
on the environment and whether, therefore, it should be the subject of environmental impact
assessment.
In the national legislation, the evaluation of the applicability of EIA to projects considers
the characteristics of the projects, their location and the potential impact. Therefore,
evaluation must consider the environmental sensitivity, given by the presence of wetlands, coastal areas, forests or
natural parks, but above all the possible cumulation with other projects. This avoids
“artificial fragmentation”, which can eliminate the need to apply
EIA.
Projects covered by a plan or programme are excluded from the application of the cumulation criterion
already subjected to the SEA procedure and approved.
For projects located in sensitive areas, the thresholds identified in Annex IV of Part
II of Leg. Decree 152/2006 are halved.
We recall that the restyling of the rules on Environmental Impact Assessment was
announced by the European Law 2013 to close the 2009/2086 procedure on the basis of
which the European Commission accused Italy of the failure to transpose Directive
2011/92/EU on environmental impact assessment.