Today, on September 14th, in Lazarevac, the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure scheduled a public session of the Commission for Plans as part of the public insight into the Draft Spatial Plan of the designated special area for the construction of the thermal power plant "Kolubara B". This session was originally supposed to be held on July 15 this year, but it was postponed in order to prevent the spread of the infectious disease COVID19.

The session was interrupted after an hour, during which citizens that were present and representatives of civil society organizations made procedural remarks, and the representatives of the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure left the site without explanation and without announcement of a new date for the session.

In the following text, we list the key omissions in the organization of the public session, which are unfortunately a symptomatic phenomenon in the organization and management of most decision-making processes in the field of environmental protection.

1) The public session could not and should not have been held, because the current epidemiological situation does not allow it

Despite the fact that the epidemiological situation is more favourable today than almost exactly two months ago, the Regulation which puts a ban on gatherings in the Republic of Serbia in indoor and outdoor public places is still in force, which limits the number of people indoors to 30. In the building of the Municipality of Lazarevac, where the session was scheduled for today at 10 am, the number of people who gathered to participate in the public debate was bigger than the number of people who, according to the aforementioned Regulation, can gather in one place.

2) Pandemic measures cannot derogate the public's right to participate in environmental decision-making processes

Representatives of the organizers of the public session, ie the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, taking the current Regulation into account, were of the opinion that the number of people who can attend the public session may be limited in order to comply with the measures. However CSO representatives and citizens in front of the hall where the session was scheduled, had a different point of view - that the public interest and the right to participate prevails in this case, since the right of the public to participate in decision-making processes is guaranteed by legal acts higher than the Regulation - the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, the Law on Environmental Protection, the Law on Strategic Environmental Assessment, as well as the Law on Ratification of the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and the Right to Legal Protection in Environmental Matters. Representatives of the Ministry of Construction, referring to the Rulebook on the content, manner and procedure of drafting spatial and urban planning documents, argued that the session should be attended by the responsible planner, representatives of planning document authors, representatives of the local government in charge, as well as submitters of the remarks to this document, and used unacceptable pressure on some of those gathered to leave the hall in order to obtain the conditions for the session to take place.

3) The competent authority opened the session despite the presence of more than 30 people and committed several procedural violations

Despite the fact that the presence of a larger number of people than allowed was stated in the hall, the chairman opened the public session, thus directly violating the Regulation banning gatherings in public places in the Republic of Serbia. In addition, neither the chairman nor any of the members of the Commission kept an official minutes, again violating the same article of the Rulebook that the responsible authority had previously referred to in an effort to limit the number of participants.

We demand from the authorities to stop trying to conduct public hearings, despite the current epidemiological situation and the risk that the organization of these events carries for all participants. We believe that the current epidemiological situation cannot be an excuse to restrict the right of the public to be informed in a timely manner and to participate in decision-making processes in the field of environmental protection, and we suggest all responsible authorities to suspend these processes until conditions that guarantee freedom of public participation on the one hand, and the safety of all participants on the other are achieved.

Photo source: canva.com