THE COURT HAS PROHIBITED TO ASSIGN THE STAMP "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY" TO CONCLUSIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENTS OR THE REGIONAL OFFICE OF THE MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION HAS BEEN UNVEILED
Andriy Petriv, senior lawyer Environment – People – Law, access to information program coordinator
On November 25, 2009 Lviv Circuit Administrative Court adopted a judgment which fully allowed the claims of International public interest environmental law organization Environment-People-Law against the Regional office of the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
In particular, Lviv Circuit Administrative Court as a court of the first instance:
- recognized the actions of the Regional office of the Ministry of Environmental Protection towards classifying conclusions of state EIAs as information which can be assigned the stamp "for official use only" to be illegal:
- recognized illegal and abolished the provision of the Regulations of the Regional office of the Ministry of Environmental Protection of 19.05.2009 #31-i regarding Paragraph 14 of the Annex #1 of the List of confidential information which can be assigned the stamp "for official use only";
- obliged the Regional office of the Ministry of Environmental Protection to refrain from classifying conclusions of state EIAs as information that can be assigned the stamp "for official use only" in the future.
This decision is of paramount importance for the public because in Ukraine conclusions of state EIAs are the main and basically the only source of information to determine the degree of environmental threat and safety of a planned or ongoing activity, to analyze compliance of objects of EIAs with environmental legislation, to evaluate impact of activity of objects of EIA on the quality of environment and natural resources, to assess effectiveness, comprehensiveness, rationale and adequacy of measures towards protecting the environment.
However, starting from May 2006 the Lviv Regional office of the Ministry of Environmental Protection had been classifying conclusions of EIAs as confidential information. Such actions of the Regional office of the Ministry of Environmental Protection lead to a number of restrictions for public access to such information. Having strengthened its position through numerous relevant regional regulations and taking regular measures towards improving and sophisticating the mechanism of imposing secrecy, the Regional office of the Ministry of Environmental Protection created astonishingly effective "mechanism of non-compliance" with provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine and the Aarhus Convention for the benefit of industry.
For more than three years a considerable amount of environmental information had been inaccessible for the public; not a single EIA conclusion had been disclosed to the public as it should have been pursuant to the provisions of the Aarhus Convention, the Law of Ukraine "On Environmental Expertise".
Consequently, the judgment of Lviv Circuit Administrative Court not only creates a possibility for the public to have free access to all previously approved conclusions of state EIAs, but also guarantees that in the future the notions of "EIA conclusions" and "confidentiality" will lie in different planes.
