EIA portal of the federal government

The legally prescribed public participation (Section 9 EIA Act and Section 25 Administrative Procedure Act) is an integral part of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) and plays a key role in terms of the quality, scope and effectiveness of environmental assessments. Section 9 (1b) UVPG currently stipulates that documents in accordance with Section 6 UVPG and the reports and recommendations relevant to the decision regarding the project should be made available for public participation. In practice, this is often done by displaying them at the competent authority and publishing them in regional media, e.g. local daily newspapers, but increasingly also online by making them available on the homepages of the competent authorities. The new EU Directive 2014/52/EU on EIA now provides for changes to procedure-integrated public participation as part of the EIA. For example, Art. 6 Para. 5 of EU Directive 2014/52/EU states that “relevant information shall be made available to the public electronically at the appropriate administrative level”, “at least via a central portal or easily accessible access points”. To this end, the federal government intends to set up and operate a central federal EIA portal under the responsibility of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). This portal is primarily intended to provide the public with relevant information from EIA procedures carried out by federal authorities. To this end, the Department of Environmental Assessment and Planning at the Technical University (TU) of Berlin is carrying out a research and development project commissioned by the UBA in cooperation with the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues (UfU) and the Zebralog agency. The aim of this project is to develop a concept and to create and test a prototype of the planned federal EIA portal. In addition to minimum legal content requirements, the concept developed will also propose additional, optional content and functions. In addition, organizational, personnel and financial as well as software and hardware requirements for the establishment and operation of an EIA portal will be defined.