Countdown to Europe
In the fourteen years since the fall of communism the Czech Republic has made great efforts to repair the damage caused by decades of environmental neglect. With the installation of de-sulphurization equipment at all industrial facilities, the state of the air we breathe has significantly improved. Strict new laws and regulations have reduced the pollution of rivers and soil to such an extent that rare species of wild life have returned to their one-time habitats. A great deal still needs to be done and Czechs need to become more environment conscious on a day to day basis, but even now one can say that the country has overcome the biggest hurdles on the road to becoming an environment friendly member of the European community. The country is due to join the EU on May 1st and we asked Jakub Kaspar of the Czech Environment Ministry what remains to be done in the coming weeks.
The regions have expressed some concern about the impact of these laws on construction, on ski-resorts, on tourism in general. Will they make a big difference?
"There were big struggles during the adoption of the Nature 2,000 law between the Ministry of the Environment on the one hand and the farmers lobby and the hunting lobby on the other. But in the end none of the proposed amendments which were incompatible with EU laws and directives were approved by Parliament. So there should be no problems with compatibility with the Aquis Communitaire. I think that the biggest challenge facing us is in the field of water protection and waste water treatment. We have to build some 570 new water treatment facilities by 2010 which will require some 70 billion crowns. There is a possibility for the Czech Republic to gain some money from European structural funds but even so it will be a serious task for both the public and the private spheres."
Mr. Kaspar what is the most problematic area? In the past a great deal has been said about the area known as the Black Triangle - an industrially devastated region in north Bohemia. Has the situation improved in the most devastated parts of the Czech Republic?
"Yes, of course. The situation in the Black Triangle has improved very much since the beginning of the 1990s. I think that in the field of environmental protection we have similar problems as the current member states have, because the progress made since the return of democracy to the Czech Republic is really huge and we are no longer a black spot on Europe. We were in 1989, but we are not anymore."
