Adjusting the current law would have been now appropriate for regulating the strategic environmental assessment and a new law wasn’t needed, experts of the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption (CAPC), who appraised the bill, said in a news conference at IPN.
Consequently, instead of proposing a Law on Strategic Environmental Assessment, drafted by the Ministry of Environment, it would have been better to adjust the current Law on Environmental Impact Assessment.
“When a law already exists and regulates rather well this area, it would have been opportune and normal to amend this law, not to suggest another law with the status of organic law and to generate again legislative inflation,” said the Center’s president Galina Bostan. She added that an organic law is adopted by a majority of votes of MP, while an ordinary law, to amend existing legislation, by a majority of votes of those attending the sitting.
Expert Radu Jigau said that when he analyzed the EU’s Environmental Impact Assessment Directive and the bill on strategic environmental assessment, he ascertained that the author modified particular provisions of the Directive and these became thus improper.
The expert also said the informative note to the bill says the implementation of this law will not imply costs, but a number of norms of this bill envision that national and international experts will be hired and money will be thus needed.
“We consider the adoption of this bill without reasoned economic-financial analysis will bring no benefit to the legislative process,” stated Radu Jigau.
The CAPC carried out the appraisal within the project “Harmonization of the legislation with the international human rights standards” that is financially supported by the Human Rights Defenders of Sweden.
