INTRODUCTION

There are two important features of the Polish system of issuance of development consent for projects requiring the Environmental Impact Assessment that need mentioning for the purpose of this article: the first one is the multi-stage nature of the development consent in Poland and the other is that the first stage thereof is the “environmental decision”, summarizing the findings of the Environmental Impact Assessment. The latter is regulated by the Act of 3 October 2008 on the access to environmental information, public participation and the Environmental Impact Assessment (OJ 2016 item 353 text codified as amended, further referred to as EIA Act).

At the same time, the Polish legal system provides for several sectoral Acts that derogate the general rules of the issuance of environmental decisions and replace them with separate provisions that are more favourable for the investors and at the same time lowering the safeguards for the environment. Those changes encompass the elements as mentioned:

The following reservation has to be made: while it is true that the environmental decisions are in many cases preceded by the Environmental Impact Assessment, it is not a prerequisite for their issuance; even if a project in the course of so-called screening procedure (see Article 4 of Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment as amended, OJ L 26, 28 January 2012) was found to be of non-EIA nature, the environmental decision is still required. However, for the sake of the clarity of this dissertation, it is focused solely on the environmental decisions issued for the projects requiring the Environmental Impact Assessment.