Government upbeat on salvaging key transport projects

A special session of the lower house of parliament has put the spotlight on the country’s failure to push through new rules for evaluating the environmental impact of major road, railway, and other projects, As a result the government is now scrambling to salvage the possibility of pushing ahead with around a dozen projects while many others face the prospect of delays.

Zbyněk Stanjura, photo: CTK

It was an occasion for a lot of finger pointing and apportioning blame. Thursday’s special session of the lower house highlighted the country’s inability to implement so-called Environmental Impact Assessments according to stricter rules out of Brussels.

Most of the finger pointing was between political parties. Former transport minister and leader of the grouping of centre-right Civic Democrats in the lower house Zbyněk Stanjura directed some of his anger at the European Commission as well:

“The lower house of the Czech parliament fiercely rejects the principle of retroactivity which is being applied to the Czech Republic by the European Commission. With this approach the European Commission is acting direct against Czech national interests.”

The Czech Republic though stands out alone among EU member states for long failing to adopt new rules calling for assessments to include other construction options, greater consultation of citizens, and an evaluation of public health impacts.

Photo: Filip Jandourek, Czech Radio

Instead, the Czech Republic has continued to work from rules basically dating back to 1992 and hundreds of projects have environmental assessments dating back 15, and in some cases 20 years, which the European Commission is for the most part no longer willing to accept as valid. According to some reports, projects worth around 130 billion crowns could be at stake.

But the government is not willing to take the rap for the embarrassing situation. It argues that it began to try and resolve the clash with the European Commission within weeks of taking office at the start of 2014. The signs of increasing impatience from Brussels had long been apparent with the first infringement procedure against the country launched in 2006, a European Court ruling against it in 2010, and a final demand that Prague get its legislative act together days before the current government took over.

The government says that it is now negotiating with Brussels and is fairly confident that 11 key transport projects, 10 road and one rail, can win an exemption from having new environment assessment repeated and can proceed as planned. These include sections of ring road round Prague and České Budějovice and the extension of the D11 motorway which should eventually lead to Poland. One key rail link on the list is part of the so-called České Budějovice rail corridor which should eventually cut an hour off the journey time to the south Bohemian city from Prague. A factor in favour of many of these projects is that they are European as well as Czech priorities.

Minister of Transport Dan Ťok says the clash over environment assessments, or EIAs, are just one part of a much wider problem that is preventing the country from building the infrastructure it needs:

Dan Ťok, photo: Filip Jandourek

“EIA is not the basic problem. The basic problem is the whole set of complicated rules which begins with the development plans dealt with by the regional authority, then there is the EIA, and then territorial administrative proceedings and then planning approval. At each of these stages there can be repeated challenges in an administrative or normal court. That is why construction is so slow and that needs to be addressed.”