The Slovak government is to hold an extraordinary session on Friday, February 5, to deal with amendments to the law on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) following the directive of the European Commission (EC), Braňo Ondruš, head of the Government Office press department, said after the government session on February 4, the TASR newswire wrote.
Ondruš further explained that if the amendments are approved by the government, parliament could deal with them in a fast-tracked procedure as early as next week.
According to the information brought by the Trend weekly Trend on February 2 Slovakia could lose part of the EU money is the extraordinary legislative measures adopted advanced fast-tracked construction of motorways through private-public partnership (PPP) funding that were passed in 2007.
Based on the content of the letter sent from European Commission Regional Policy Director-General Dirk Ahner to Slovak ambassador to the EU Ivan Korčok, the weekly said that EU funds are endangered due to the preference of motorway construction over citizens’ rights to participate in decision over the environment in which they live in, which is at odds with the EU directive.
In early 2007, the Slovak parliament limited citizens’ rights when it approved the legislation for motorway constructions, in the view of the EC. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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