* Admissibility date reflects the date the case was officially registered. All other dates pertain to the date in which a stage was completed.
Case Description
Complaint
In December 2016 the EIB-CM received a petition from four citizens’ infinitive organisations on the Dalmation coast in Croatia. The petition was addressed to around 20 organisations and instances and instances with and outside the EU. The petition alleges that a Waste Management Centre that is part of a larger Waste Management system in the County of Splitko-Dalmatinska risks to irreparably damaging the drinking water resources of the County and that the national administrative bodies and authorities have wilfully and consistently ignored local stakeholders’ concerns during the past 15 years of the project development and have, moreover, engaged in a process of adapting the regulatory settings and parameters in order to accommodate the development of the project as they planned it.
It appears that no financing request for the project has so far been submitted; the project is currently a JASPERS assignment. JASPERS closed the assignment in December 2016 with an Action Completion Note. The EIB-CM declared the petition admissible as a complaint with a view to undertaking a compliance review of JASPERS’ action in the context of this project.
EIB-CM Action
The EIB-CM consulted with the EIB’s services responsible for JASPERS and with the European Commission’s Environment Directorate-General (DG ENV).
Conclusions
In the course of the EIB-CM’s investigation it appeared that the Commission (DG ENV) had also admitted the petition as a complaint and were reviewing it with respect to the applicable EU environmental legislation, in particular the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive and the Habitats Directive, as well as from the perspective of EU regional policy.
The Commission’s investigation found that, with regard to the co-funding of the project, there was no co-financing approval for this project and therefore no point in reviewing the allegation concerning the falsification of documents, and that, with regard to the alleged breaches of the EIA and the Habitats Directives, the administrative process for the possible authorisation of the Lećevica WMC project was still ongoing. As the final decisions on the project had not been taken, the Commission's services dismissed the complaint.
The EIB-CM’s investigation found that JASPERS had performed in its Action Completion Note a comprehensive review of the project documents prepared by the beneficiary and its consultants and had made a series of recommendations on how the project could be improved. Both actions are fully in line with JASPERS’ terms of reference. The JASPERS recommendations go as far as to conclude that the project is unlikely to be implemented in its present form.
Based on the above, the EIB-CM has come to the overall conclusion that at present the petition has no grounds as an EIB-CM complaint and has decided to close this case.