Minutes of the 1St Meeting of the Working Group on Rivers

1

Working Group on Rivers

Minutes of the 4thmeeting

European Commission, Brussels,

06/05/2011, 10:00 to 17:30

Introduction

Stefan Leiner (SL), Head of Unit, DG ENV.B.2,reminded participants of the overall objective of the guidance document, as agreed in the terms of reference, which is to offer clarification on the application of the Habitats and Birds Directives, and in particular Article 6,as regards inland waterway development and management.

The first draft was presented and discussed in the working group in November 2010 and participants were given until 30 January 2011 to submit further comments. A second draft has been produced on the basis of these comments and circulated to the working group before this meeting.

Kerstin Sundseth (Ecosystems LTD/ N2K Group) provided an overview of the comments received and the changes that were made in the 2nd draft. She explained that this also led to anoverallrestructuring of the guide (see ppt for details).

Discussion on the 2nd draft of the Guidance Document

General comments

SL invited participants to give their general reactions to the second draft before entering into detailed comments per chapter:

-Karin de Schepper, INE, considers the 2nd draft to be much better structured and more balanced and places a greater emphasis on how integrated planning should be carried out but also thinks it still needs more work to make the guide more practical.

-Claus Mayr, NABU considers the 2nd draft to be much better and more in keeping with meeting the objectives as described in the terms of reference, some details here and there still need to be addressed e.g. reference to the new EU biodiversity strategy adopted earlier this week but overall it is a good document.

-Roger Morris on behalf of Natural England, UKraises the general issue that one of the problems developers have is to understand why there is a conservation issue in the first place. It does not come out clearly in the document at the moment and perhaps this is not the place for it but there is a need to provide a baseline understanding so that developers who commission consultants to carry out EIAs/AAs can ensure they are done properly and are value for money. SL considered that there are elements in the present draft that address this but if there are some practical suggestions of where to improve this that would be helpful;

-Jan HodovskýCzech Ministry of Transport, noted that most of their remarks sent on the first draft at end of January have not been included and they consider the draft is still not well balanced in favour of the interests of IWT. They cannot therefore approve the document as it stands. They consider there are already a lot of good documents on environmental issues relating to IWT but not enough about the needs of IWT.

-In response, SL asked that when it comes to discussions on the different chapters, CZ should raise the comments which they believe have not been considered so that the Commission can explain why they have not been taken on board or can open a discussion on these. He also recalled the Terms of Reference for the guidance: it is not a general document to promote IWT; its purpose is to assist those developers who are planning new developments to respect EU nature and other environmental legislation. There will be further opportunities to provide comments on the 2nd draft as well.

-Cornelia Schuetz, representative of North-Rhine Westphalia,is overall satisfied with the document but considers that the criteria of the Birds and Habitats Directives that are relevant for planning are not sufficiently elaborated in the document, (e.g. what the annexes mean; reference to annex IV species). Also does not like the style of the guide and considers there is too much repetition.

-Andreas Beck, Via Donau/Platina considers the current draft to be a major step forward and better focused on river engineering projects rather than on transportation as such. The first three chapters are shorter and better grouped together. There are however still some issues as regards the language and the need to emphasise the importance of IWT. Also the ‘do nothing’ scenario still comes out too strongly, e.g. in Austria if nothing is done now to the waterways, the wetland forest east of Vienna will become an ordinary forest. It will be important to look carefully at the wording of the document in this regard.

-Gerhard Nagl, Donaufluss/EEB, considers there has been good progress on all aspects and the document is a good working basis but would need more time to comment on the specifics. The document presents the EU framework in a neutral way but it should clear that this document is not about promoting IWT, rather about how to deal with infrastructure projects and what they canmean for the river environment.

-Michael Saha, CCNR, believes the context setting has improved but considers that the function and impact of navigation could be described in a more positive way – e.g. to show the willingness of IWT to contribute sustainable development.Concerning the guidance part agrees it is useful to have a ‘cookbook’ that could be used by the planners, but it would also be helpful to have their comments on the draft.

-Representative of Platina indicated that there would be an opportunity to do this via the 4th workshop of ICPDR which is foreseen for the 4th quarter of the year.

SL is happy to see a general endorsement of the 2nd draft. There are still details to clarify and improve with the help of the group. In particular the guidance part of the document (chapters 4-6) would benefit from more concrete examples and case studies but this needs the input of the group to help find these.

Chapter 1

Main comments:

-Whilst it is true that approval procedures are very often disrupted by poor appropriate assessments (AA), there seem to be two different ways of dealing with that across the EU. One is the model used in UK where the competent authority itself undertakes the AA relying heavily on information presented by the applicant partly within the EIA. The other model is based on the applicant doing the AA and the competent authority making a decision on the basis of that AA. The problem with the applicant doing the AA in his view is that the applicant does not look at the AA in its legal context. Suggests to have two boxes presenting the different approaches, looking at the pros and cons of each.

-SL is reluctant to present the pros and cons as it is not for the Commission to interfere in how MS organise the AA procedures in their respective countries but it could be useful to explain that the developers should have a good understanding of the legislation and how it works in order to ensure that the AA are done correctly.

-A question was raised about what the term ‘relief capacity’means and whether it is correct to state that IWT is overall less polluting. Maximilian Bauernfeind (MB) from DG MOVE explained that ‘relief capacity’ refers to the free capacity that rivers have to take on more goods thancurrently being transported by road. Air pollution has to be seen in context. There will be a significant increase in transport needs over the coming years andIWT is from an ‘emissions point of view’ is the most efficient. SL stated that he does not want to go into a discussion on relative merits of different transport systems – the Commission has already made clear that it considers IWT to be a sustainable form of transport.

-A question was asked why in 1.1 the guide focuses on the transportation of goods and not also people. Also why the Marine Strategy Framework Directive(MFSD) and soil strategy are not mentioned. MB explained that the White Paper on EU transport policy also focuses on goods transportation. The reference to the MSFD was deliberately left out since this guide concerns inland waterway and there is already a separate guide for coastal navigation. The soilsdirective is not yet adopted.

-The point was raised that the WFD should not be considered the main focus, the guide is about the BHD and so the order should be changed to start with the EU nature directives and then refer to the wider objectives of the WFD (also relates to chapter 3.3).

Chapter 2

-There are several new EC documents in the pipeline as regards transport and NAIADES which will need to be incorporated in the final draft. Some specific aspects as regards the transport part may also need rewording to better reflect current situation, e.g. NAIADES and PLATINA should not be presented at the same level. The latter could be summarized in a box instead so that there is a clearer distinction between legislation and policy on the one hand and projects on the other.

-There followed a debate on whether to shorten the text further for both IWT policy aspects and BHD aspects – but it was felt that some degree of detail should be kept since it is important for the different sectors to know about the others’ main policies, even if they are already very familiar with their own sector’s policies.

-In the TEN-T section 2.2.3 the link to the EU treaty should be made more clearly and the text should not give the impression that the only areas of concerns for IWT/HBD are linked to the two current TEN-T projects for IWT.

-There was a request to have more on the comparison between IWT and other types of transport modes. SL explained that this had been included in the first version but was removed because many comments criticized that there was too much introductory text and it took too long to get to the substance of the document which is why a more summarized description is given in the 2nd draft. Also the document makes clear that IWT is supported by the EU and that there is a need for this so it is not necessary to go into details about the relative merits of IWT compared to other transport modes.

-The section 2.4 should give more information on the two nature directives, first about the overall objectives and intention of the legislation and then more specifically about those aspects that are directly relevant for planning which can then be taken up again in more detail in chapter 4.

-Last para tosection 2.4.2 is wrongly worded; the directive does not talk about having to prove a negative effect but about the necessity to prove the absence of a likely significant effect – i.e. precautionary principle.

-The new biodiversity strategy should be included and in section 2.4 adjustments should be made to refer to ‘all’ EU birds and to habitat types as well. Also there should be more reference to articles 3 and 10and Annex IV of the Habitats Directive and Article 4 of the Birds Directive. The species protection aspect of the directives should be re-enforced.

-In 2.5 there should be more emphasis on the requirement to ensure non-deterioration under the WFD.

-Following a discussion on external costs there was a general consensus that this does not need to be further elaborated as it is already referred to in the context of the new White Paper on the Road Map on transport.

Chapter 3

Main comments:

-The examples at the end of the chapters should be reduced in number and those retained more elaborated to show the context and background in which the ecological measures were adopted. Some are compensation measures required under German Federal Law which are obligatory to make up for foreseen impacts, others may be considered mitigation measures or measures introduced that go over an beyond what is required by law.

-It would be helpful also to have a summary of the different types of measures that can be used to enhance river ecology, illustrated by some good examples – e.g. for groundwater connectivity, for riverbed dynamics, bank restoration etc.

-In 3.6.1 there should be more explanation of the kind of habitat types and species that might be affected and which are most likely to be affected by IWT project – the details could be put as an annex to the document.

-After a discussion on invasive alien species, there was a general consensus that the text in 3.5.1 should be shortened but without loosing sight of the fact that this is also a threat to rivers. The suggestion was also made to put section 3.5.2 before 3.5.1 and to move the box on quality of ecosystem services to the section that discusses the value of ecosystem where it would be more relevant.

-There should be a short description of the AGM treaty to accompany the map on page 26. The graph on page 27 is miss-leading and it would be better to replace it with a sentence about the ton/km range varying from 1-3. Chapter 3.6should be more focused on river engineering issues and not so much day to day transport issues but recognizing that the AA will also need to look at the impact of day to day transport under article 6. Reference to the PIANC 99 document could be added here too.

-The box under 3.5 needs rewording because the Rhine is also mentioned. The 2nd para under 3.1 could also be expanded.

-The question was raised whether it was necessary to put the texts that are copied from the Platina manual again here. There was a general consensus that it is useful to keep the text since this helps with the overall understanding of the issues, but if there are specific proposals to shorten certain boxes these can be considered.

-After discussion it was agreed that the map on page 25 should remain in the document - the key message being that there are many N2000 sites on major lowland rivers, but the details of different sites per river and the explanation about the exercise done of overlaying N2000 spatial data over the WISE data could be put in annex.

Chapter 4

Main comments on chapter 4:

-4.4 is not clear and may need rewording to explain better that some Member States have introduced the need to restore the ecology of rivers as part of the transport policy.

-A question was raised whether 4.2.1 should consider also the environmental costs and not just the transport costs and needs, this could be clarified in 5th paragraph.

-A question was raised about how long it takes to do an appropriate assessment and how long a developer should wait for a ‘green light’ but it was considered that this is too much dependent on the specific circumstances relating to each project to make general comments on this aspect. Nevertheless the point can be stressed that if the AA is done correctly this will clearly save time and resources.

-Minor comments were made on wording; SL requested these be submitted in writing to make the editing easier.

Chapter 5

Main comments:

-The link between AA and EIA/SEA should be better explained. E.g.some terms used in the EIA are not relevant or can lead to confusion with the terms used in the AA, the type of information that is collected also needs to be different, and the decision has a different impact. The text at the end of 5.1 should be reworded in a less negative way – AA procedure can be coordinated with EIA/SEA procedure but each assessment may require different information elements and evaluations of impacts etc.

-A suggestion was made to simply cut and paste text from the existing Article 6 guidance documents and then illustrate the points with practical IWT examples. The former was not considered appropriate as the existing guidance documents are more general and also very comprehensive. They explain general concepts whereas the current chapter 5 has turned these into a practical step by step guide on how to carry out an AA in the case of IWT developments which will be much more useful for planners.

-It was agreed that more practical examples should be given to illustrate the different stages of the assessment but this needs to input and help of the working group to find such good examples.

-5.1, 1st para should be reformulated to avoid talking immediately about potential conflicts – this can be explained in a different way. However the guide should also not give the impression either that there is always a solution to every issue – applying the procedure correctly will not necessarily guarantee every time that a license will be given- sometimes choices will need to be made between different uses.

-In 5.3 there should be a better explanation of what applies for activities outside Natura 2000 sites, for instance by bringing there relevant text from p. 87. There should also be more guidance on what to do with projects that could have impacts in other countries. In general there could be more about how to assess cumulative effects and in-combination effects, again illustrated by practical examples where possible.

-In 5.3 the definition of plan or project should be cross referenced with the relevant ECJ ruling for Waddensea.

-5.5 should make reference to the conservation objectives since this has already to be taken into account during the screening stage and there should be a short description in the previous chapter 4 as well as since planners should be taking these into account when planning integrated projects as well.