On 26 March 2019, on the website of the Government Legislation Centre, a draft Act was published on amending the Act on providing access to information on the environment and its protection, public participation in environmental protection and on environmental impact assessments and some other acts.
In accordance with the justification for the project, the solutions contained therein have been developed on the basis of an internal assessment of the functioning of the currently binding regulations and on the basis of comments and difficulties with the interpretation of legal regulations submitted by Regional Directorates for Environmental Protection and entities planning to implement the project.
One of the main solutions proposed is the provisions on the determination of the status of parties to proceedings and the provisions on the annexes required for a request for a decision. The parties to the proceedings shall only be the owners of plots located within 100 m of the boundaries of the investment area, or plots on which, as a result of the implementation or operation of the project, environmental quality standards would be exceeded, or plots located within the range of significant impact of the project, which may introduce restrictions in the development of real estate, in accordance with its current purpose.
The draft regulations provide that the investor will be able to attach to the application for the issuance of a decision on environmental conditioned documents issued by the body keeping the register of land and buildings also in the form of electronic documents. Moreover, if the number of parties to the proceedings exceeds 10, the investor will not be obliged to submit an extract from the land register or any other document issued by the authority keeping the land and buildings register at any stage of the proceedings.
In addition, in the case of proceedings for the issuance of an environmental decision or other proceedings relating to this decision, if the number of parties exceeds 10, the authority will make service of all letters and notifications by way of a notice.