Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programs

The Nordic Council is a forum for cooperation between the Nordic parliaments and governments. The Council consists of 87 parliamentarians from the Nordic countries. The Nordic Council takes policy initiatives and monitors Nordic cooperation. The Nordic Council of Ministers is a forum for cooperation between the Nordic governments. The Nordic Council of Ministers implements Nordic cooperation. The prime ministers have the overall responsibility. Its activities are coordinated by the Nordic ministers for cooperation , the Nordic Committee for cooperation and portfolio ministers. Foreword By July 2004 all EU member countries will be expected to have implemented the directive 'On the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment' (2001/42/EC)(SEA directive) in their national legislations. By the fall of 2003 all of the Nordic countries have presented drafts of this implementation or made investigations providing basis for the implementation. Moreover, a number of national public authority investigations have been conducted as a basis for future implementation. On a Nordic basis two projects have been conducted with the aim of providing a direct input into the preparatory work for the SEA directive: Nordic experiences of Environmental Assessment of plans and programmes – identification of mutual research and development needs especially in relation to planning for sustainable development (reported in Nordregio EP 2003:1) and the project reported in this volume Nordic experiences of Environmental Assessment of plans and programmes – basis for implementation of the EU directive 2001/42/EC. These two projects and the three workshops that formed a part of them (February 2001, January 2002, Internet workshop October 2002) as the 5 th Nordic Environmental Assessment Conference – Planning for Sustainable Development the practice and potential of environmental assessment (August 2003) are all aimed at providing Nordic input to the implementation of the directive. The Nordic knowledge base provides a broad complementary input for national implementation in terms of an increased understanding of the peculiarities of national planning and SEA systems and a broader perspective concerning SEA experiences as possible legislative and administrative solutions. The Terms of Reference for the project reported here were developed in cooperation between the Nordic representatives: The aims were to: • Further the understanding of your own national SEA experiences and prerequisites for implementing SEA. A short historical overview of the national SEA discussion and a description detailing when previous SEA legislation was introduced. The current SEA legislation is then briefly described, followed by …