IES Policy Forum

Michel Amand presented the Kiev Protocol and stressed its importance for environmental policy in Europe. The PRTR Protocol was adopted in Kiev on 21 May 2003. It has 38 signatories and is open to non-UNECE Member States. Switzerland is not a Member of the Aarhus Convention but ratified the PRTR Protocol. The United States and Canada are not signatories to the Protocol but they broadened the scope of their own registers to include more of the pollutants covered by the Kiev Protocol, namely greenhouse gases. After 21 ratifications – 16 were necessary – the Protocol entered into force on 8 October 2009, the day of the Policy Forum. It requires each Party to establish a register for pollutants releases and transfers from facilities operating at least one activity listed in the annex to the Protocol. 86 pollutants are covered. The data has to be accessible to the public through electronic means and free of charge. The reports of releases and transfers do not only include routine activities but also extraordinary events. Each Party has 15 months’ time to process the data before being obliged to make it available it to the public. For the EU, this delay is 6 months longer, hence 21 months. The first reporting year for the 21 Parties is 2010. By 31 March 2011 the first data must be made available. Confidentiality provisions are in place to meet the specificities of the PRTR Protocol but they are in accordance with the Aarhus Convention. Capacity-building activities coordinated by UNECE will be conducted through bilateral and multilateral cooperation. Parties are requested to report regularly on their implementation efforts. A work programme was adopted for 2011-2014. The top three priorities of this programme are the compliance mechanisms, technical assistance and information exchange at the technical level. Amand concluded his presentation with the remark that the PRTR Protocol is a cost-effective tool for encouraging improvements of environmental performance, informing the public and assessing environmental policies.

Dania Cristofaro gave an interactive presentation by demonstrating the use of the new European PRTR (E-PRTR), taking Brussels as a practical example. This online tool will be launched on 11 November and it publishes 2007 data. It contains emission data for pollutant releases to the air, water and soil. Cristofaro stressed that this data impacts every citizen’s life. E-PRTR is a tool but also a process. It involves industry actors, national authorities, the EU and citizens. Not all facilitates are obliged to report. Not all emitters have to report. The focus lies on large emitters. Therefore there is a production capacity threshold. The aim is to cover 90% of all EU emissions of the covered pollutants. Cristofaro then showed the Internet-based E-PRTR and used it exemplarily for Brussels demonstrating how and what kind of data can be retrieved. The tool contains a search page and a map to identify industrial emitters. Cristofaro stated that she is convinced that the data is very reliable. At each stage of the data flow there is a control. The reporting format includes mandatory but also voluntary data with the aim of improving communication with the public. For commercial reasons, some data can be kept confidential but this does not include emission data. It rather refers to data such as the name of a facility if this is the name of a person etc. Cristofaro concluded her presentation by stating that the strong point of the E-PRTR is that the data comes directly from the industrial operators in contrast to some other UN registers that are implemented top-down. Member States are responsible for assessing the quality of the data. The Commission is in charge of making the data publicly available.

The two presentation were ensued by a question and answer session and a debate about the tracing of pollutants that are transferred between a number of industrial operators, the relation to and synergies with the register set up under the EU chemicals Regulation REACH, the possibilities to make available information on illegal waste sites, and the involvement of individual citizens.