SEA IN THE CONTEXT OF LANDTUSE PLANNING

Chapter 7 A Comparative Description and Analysis ofthe National Introduction of the SEA DirectiveAll the three countries included in the study have fulfilled the requirements of transposing theDirective 2001/42/EC on the ‘On the assessment of the effects of certain plan and programmes on theenvironment’ to their national legal systems. However, the review of the nationalimplementations (chapters 4, 5, 6) illustrated substantial differences in the approaches chosenby the countries when introducing the SEA directive to the national planning context. Thedirective is not only introduced to different legal frameworks nationally, but also to differentinstitutional and administrative systems and an existing practice of planning andenvironmental assessment, which differed in various respect.One of the aims of the research is to identify the relation between the transposition ofthe directive and the countries’ national contexts. In order to do so, the aspects included inthe national context that are considered to be of relevant needed to be identified, i.e. ‘thecontext of relevance’. The starting point for identifying the context of relevance in thisresearch was to examine the legal introduction of the SEA directive as well as the institutionalsystem to which the directive is introduced. The work also required a thorough examinationof the national experiences and discussions concerning the current practice and futureapplication of SEA. The results of the examination are presented in Table 7.1 ‘ComparativeSummary’.When studying the SEA implementation in the three countries, different aspectsappeared to be relevant and important for understanding the implementation of the SEAdirective. The most relevant aspects are deployed in the following categories:1. The legal introduction of the SEA directive to the national systems.2. The legal implementation of selected articles of the directive.3. The existing practice of environmental assessment or similar instruments forenvironmental integration in planning.4. Other contextual factors, e.g. the national planning system and institutional changes.This chapter gives a comparative description and analysis of the findings of the nationaloverviews provided in the previous chapters. The results from the comparative descriptionsare analysed with regard to two analytical frameworks for the SEA introduction. The firstanalytical framework used is based upon work presented by Emmelin and Lerman (2005),where the national approaches chosen for the legal introduction are examined with regard tothree main categories of implementation, i.e.:97