Challenges of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Procedure for Transboundary Projects in the Black Sea Basin

Since the environmental damage from nature and human activities never respects the national borders and is very hard to define for the marine environment, in particular, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) plays an important role in the assessment of its scope and consequences already at the earliest stage, involving political and economic aspects between the neighboring countries and preventing conflicts. The legal tools for development of the EIA procedure in the Black Sea region differ from country to country. Apart from national EIA procedures, some countries in the region are the EU members, and therefore, applying provisions of the ETA-related Directives; some are Contracting Parties to the Espoo and Aarhus Conventions; also the Black Sea countries are members to Regional Environmental Conventions, i.e. Barcelona Convention and Bucharest Convention. The multitude of legal instruments available, overlapping and discrepancies in their application make it extremely important to create the synergy between the procedures and practices with a final aim to enforce the implementation of all the above mentioned legal instruments in the Black Sea basin. Also, one of the crucial elements is to facilitate the better interaction and cooperation between the bilateral and multilateral MEAs in the region considered and to unify the EIA-related documentation and guidelines. The objective of this paper is to present the legal analysis of the EIA legislation applicable and to give some recommendations to policy-makers on its successful implementation in the Black Sea region.