Monitoring report on public participation

The research project “Monitoring report on public participation in infrastructure projects” examines public participation in environmentally relevant infrastructure projects in Germany for the first time in 2018. For the first time, the monitoring report lists all procedures in which citizens and environmental associations in Germany were able to actively participate in infrastructure projects and allows a description of the situation regarding public participation in the environmentally relevant infrastructure sector.

The monitoring report provides information on the scope, procedures and areas of public participation for the first time in 2018 and will be updated annually from now on. The aim is to enable statements to be made about a relevant area of everyday democracy in Germany and to record practice.

The need to publish all approval procedures with an environmental impact assessment (EIA) and public participation on internet portals since mid-2017 means that it is now possible for the first time to statistically record the number of procedures with public participation.

The 2018 monitoring report provides information on the:

– previously unknown number of procedures in which the public can participate in the infrastructure sector in Germany,

– Areas and focal points of environmentally relevant public participation in the infrastructure sector (including transport projects, wind turbines or animal fattening facilities),

– Distribution of admission procedures by federal state,

– The quality and information content of online advertisements for public participation,

– Procedures in which discussion dates are waived and anomalies regarding discussion dates and display periods, as well as

– on other information, such as particularly citizen-friendly approaches to public participation, the provision of documents and links or ways of getting in touch.

The first monitoring report for 2018 focuses on the following key infrastructure planning processes in Germany:

– Planning approval and planning permission procedures,

– Approval procedures in accordance with the Federal Immission Control Act, and

– other approval procedures.

The results of the monitoring can be found in the Monitoring Report 2018 and in the Detailed Report on the Monitoring Report 2018. The results of the study are summarized in this background paper.

To introduce the 2018 Monitoring Report to the public debate, UfU hosted a virtual symposium “Public participation in Germany – ten years after the events of Stuttgart 21” on March 4, 2021. The presentation of the event with all presentations and the press review on Stuttgart 21 are published here

The project and the symposium are sponsored by Heidehof Stiftung GmbH (HHS).