The proposal to amend the Law on Integrated Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution, which has been sent to the National Assembly without public discussion, shows that the Republic of Serbia and the competent ministry of environmental protection do not have the capacity to implement the regulations. The deadline for issuing integrated permits to major polluters has been pushed back, this time until the end of 2024. The re-immanting of the deadline for issuing integrated permits is a clear signal to polluters that laws do not apply to them and that the state will always be there to support them in lawlessness because the laws themselves do not care and are unable to enforce them.
The Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Integrated Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution was adopted at the 86th session of the Government of the Republic of Serbia on October 21st and submitted to the National Assembly on October 22, 2021. The bill contains only three articles, and Article 2 proposes that the deadline for issuing integrated permits for existing facilities be extended until December 31, 2024. We are reminded that the deadline under the applicable law expired on December 31, 2020.
Why are integrated permissions important? These permits provide comprehensive protection of air, water and soil from pollution, pollution prevention and application of the best and most acceptable technical solutions for the environment. These permits ensure that even large pollutants operate in accordance with high environmental standards and therefore do no harm to people's health and the environment.
Is preparing and processing an integrated permission request a challenging procedure? Of course it is. Serious preparation, engagement of experts and acquisition of numerous conditions and approvals is needed. Therefore, only large polluters and companies have this obligation, which by the nature of their work should have the capacity to produce a request for an integrated permit. All this is an obligation prescribed by law, which both the competent authorities and the companies to which the law has been applied for 18 years.
Is it necessary for the state to provide adequate administrative and professional capacities for processing requests for integrated permits? Of course it is. But from 2004 until today, only four people were hired in the department of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in charge of issuing integrated permits – according to the systematization of jobs in the ministry on the affairs of integrating licenses, only four people were hired. It is similar in the Provincial Secretariat for Urbanism and Environmental Protection, while in many local self-government units there are no employees who issue integrated permits.
The change, according to the rationale, aims to extend the deadline to the competent authority for resolving the submitted requirements for issuing an integrated permit and harmonising it with the Law on Environmental Protection. The changes, it says, will provide conditions for more efficient functioning and organizing the issuance of integrated permits on the territory of the Republic of Serbia.
How to? By rescheduled for three years? Let's use a simple math. If 46 of the 227 permits were issued in 18 years, how would 180 permits be issued in three years? Countries with better administrative capacities also issue an average of 3 to 4 permits per year. Not to introduce new facilities in the calculations that will be built in the next 3 years. The government does not find it necessary for citizens to explain why the system has not worked so far, nor does it see its responsibility in the devastating results in this area. And it is precisely the irresponsibility of the competent institutions that has put us in a situation where, a year after the legal deadline, most major polluters do not have an integrated permit.
The real question is, what has the state done to address the problems it now cites as reasons for re-moving deadlines? What will the proposer of the bill do in the coming years so that these obligations are not delayed again? The proposer of the law does not answer this question, but clarifies that the expansion of human capacity and the education of personnel is not currently in the government's work plan.
A previous change to the Law, i.e. extension of deadlines, the government argued in almost identical ways as now: insufficient time for operators to submit complete documentation, insufficient capacity of the competent authorities to verify and issue integrated permits based on it, which would damage the operator economically. Additionally, this time the government says that the big problem is the lack of necessary documentation that is submitted with the request for an integrated permit (such as the use permit, project documentation, water permits and conditions of other competent authorities). How is it possible that the government of a state, which claims to be a legal state, cites among the obstacles to law enforcement the elemental obligations of operators such as the possession of a water permit or the conditions of other bodies and organisations? Then why don't you take away this unnecessary bureaucratic nonsense, too, by simply changing the law?!
Under the Law on Integrated Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has drafted a preliminary list of facilities subject to the issuance of an integrated permit, which houses a total of 227 plants. To date, according to the analysis of the effect of the law, only 46 have been issued, meaning that a total of 181 facilities are currently conducting activities without the necessary permits to operate. Thus, some of the biggest polluters in the Republic of Serbia do not have these permits: the license is not owned by any thermal power plant operated by the JP "Elektroprivreda Srbije", no facility within the mining and metallurgical complex in Bor operated by Zijin Bor Copper Ltd, nor within the factory complex of the former Smederevo steel plant operated by HBIS Group Serbia.
The Law on Environmental Protection stipulates that the inspector has the right and duty to determine when conducting inspection supervision whether the conditions for the operation of the plant and activities have been met. The inspector also has a wide range of powers at his disposal to eliminate illegalities and oblige operators to undertake obligations in accordance with the law. The Law on Integrated Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution stipulates that starting the plant and performing activities without an integrated permit is an economic offence for which the operator should be fined between RSD 150,000 and RSD 3,000,000, and the responsible person in the operator with a fine of 30,000 to 200,000 dinars.
Despite its explicit legal obligation, the competent inspection authorities have not implemented this law, and RERI has so far submitted 5 requests for extraordinary inspection supervision to the competent authorities, as well as two applications for economic offences against responsible polluters.
At the end of the day, the question is: Why do we even have licensing procedures, if the authorities continue to extend deadlines in favour of large polluters? Do their interests come first and if they are, which is why decision-makers in Serbia discourage our legal and constitutional order by passing laws and amending those laws that they know will not be applied?
Text downloaded from reri.org.rs
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