knowledge 24 June 2026 |

The EU’s proposal on accelerating environmental assessments

As part of the EU drive to cut administrative burdens, the Commission tabled ten omnibus proposals in 2025.  Omnibus VIII, presented in December 2025, aims to simplify environmental legislation and includes a proposed Regulation to accelerate EU environmental assessments.  The Regulation proposes a common acceleration framework across all sectors, while affording enhanced treatment to “strategic sectors”. This briefing covers the principal changes proposed by the Regulation.

Scope of the Regulation

It is proposed that the Regulation will apply to environmental assessments and screening of plans, programmes and projects under the (i) Environmental Impact Assessment Directive (“EIA Directive”), the (ii) Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (“SEA Directive”), the (iii) Habitats Directive, the (iv) Conservation of Wild Birds Directive (“Birds Directive”) and (v) the Water Framework Directive (“WF Directive”).

Streamlining of environmental assessment procedures across all sectors

The Regulation proposes to streamline the various environmental assessment procedures required by the above Directives for a plan, programme or project.  Member States will be required, where the obligation to carry out assessments of the effects on the environment or screening arises simultaneously from any two or more of the above Directives, to establish a coordinated or joint procedure fulfilling all the requirements of those Directives.

Under the coordinated procedure a competent authority is required to coordinate the various individual assessments, while under the joint procedure a competent authority is required to provide for a single assessment of the environmental impact of a particular plan, programme or project required by the relevant Directives. 

Given that the environmental assessments required by these Directives are different, require differing levels of information, serve different functions, and apply different legal tests, it is unclear how the joint procedure set out in Article 4 of the proposed Regulation will work in practice and whether it may just lead to mistakes and grounds for legal challenges.

The proposed Regulation also seeks to clarify (and, it appears, seeks to limit) the circumstances in which changes or extensions to existing projects require an environmental assessment.  First, the proposed Regulation provides that such changes shall only be subject to screening in order to determine if they are likely to have significant effects on the environment, and then provides that they shall be subject to environmental assessment only where they involve “major works” that represent risks that are similar to or greater than, in terms of their effects on the environment, to those posed by the original project.  The consequences of this appear, on first blush, far-reaching, as the provision suggests that the environmental impact assessment obligation for changes and extensions to existing projects is limited to cases where the change involves “major works”, and where the effects of that change, considered in isolation, equal or exceed the effects of the original project.  It is likely that this will have to be clarified as this provision does seem to alter the criteria under which environmental assessments are required (by introducing a new and higher threshold for environmental assessment of changes or extensions to original projects), which perhaps goes further than Recital 13 first suggests.    

Member States will be required to establish a “single point of contact” for environmental assessments and required to endeavour to waive administrative charges and fees associated with such assessments for small and medium‑sized enterprises.

Reducing the duration of environmental assessments

Maximum timeframes are proposed for the various stages of environmental assessments under the EIA Directive.

• screening decisions: 60 days from the date the developer has submitted all required information (45 days for changes/extensions)
• scoping opinions: 30 days (from the date of the scoping request)
• public consultation on an environmental impact assessment report: between 30 and 90 days
• completeness check of the information provided: within 30 days following the completion of consultations
• issuing of reasoned conclusion: within a maximum of 90 days following the acknowledgement of completeness

These maximum EIA Directive timelines also apply to joint or coordinated procedures where the EIA of a project is combined with assessment of that project under the Habitats Directive, the Birds Directive, or the Water Framework Directive.

Maximum Timeframes are also proposed for the purposes of assessments of plans and programmes under the SEA Directive, and again where a plan or programme is subject to a joint or coordinated procedure (i.e. where the SEA is combined with assessment of the plan or programme under the Habitats Directive, the Birds Directive, or the Water Framework Directive), the SEA Directive timelines apply.

All of these deadlines may be extended in “exceptional cases” by 30 days due to factors such as the complexity of a proposed project, plan, or programme with the developer (or the party responsible for the plan or programme) notified of the reasons for this delay.  While this will be welcomed by our clients, and almost all stakeholders, it is unclear the extent to which these timelines will change the dial on overall project programmes.

Restricting legal challenges to projects

To address litigation driven delays, and in the context of judicial review proceedings relating to environmental assessments captured by the proposed Regulation, Member States may preclude arguments being raised before a court where they were not raised during the administrative stage of project approval.  This is provided that the competent authority made available the necessary information in due time so that those arguments were known or could have been known and reviewed during the administrative stage leading to project approval. 

This proposal, if implemented, will support and strengthen the existing line of Irish case law in this area.

Moreover, the Birds Directive and Habitats Directive, which have been the subject of many legal challenges are to have their requirements diluted under proposals contained in the Regulation. When the implementation of plans, or when the construction, operation or decommissioning of projects result in the “occasional killing or disturbance” of protected birds or other species (protected under the Birds Directive or the Habitats Directive) such killing or disturbance is not to be considered deliberate (within the meaning of Article 5 of the Birds Directive and Article 12(1) of the Habitats Directive) where the plan or project has adopted “appropriate and proportionate mitigation measures”. The adequacy of these measures is to be assessed by reference to whether significant adverse population‑level impacts are avoided despite effects on individual specimens of those species. The proposal appears to align with the CJEU decision earlier this year in VIRUS and Others (Case C-131/24) where the CJEU held that Article 5(d) of the Birds Directive prohibits the deliberate disturbance of wild birds only where the disturbance would be significant having regard to the objectives of the Directive.  There is no “deliberate disturbance” within the meaning Article 5(d) where accompanying measures make it possible to prevent any significant disturbance of the birds concerned. The Court also held that the effectiveness of such measures may be established by a reasoned assessment of a court expert, rather than requiring absolute proof in every case.

Acceleration of environmental assessments for strategic sectors

The Regulation proposes the acceleration of environmental assessments for strategic sectors or categories of strategic projects defined in existing or future Union legislation.

A “toolbox” for strategic sectors is proposed via Article 14 and set out in the Annex to the proposed Regulation.

Future developments

The proposed Regulation will be dealt with according to the ordinary legislative procedure, meaning that both the European Parliament and the Council must jointly adopt the proposal before it can enter into force.  It is not possible to predict at present when this will occur, but the EU Parliament’s lead negotiator has recently proposed major changes to the proposed Regulation, including the removal of accelerated treatment for strategic sectors and the ninety-day deadline for undertaking environmental assessments / issuing of reasoned conclusion.  The first reading of the proposed Regulation before the European Parliament is indicatively scheduled for 19 October.