Strategic Moves - Regional Environmental Center for Central and ...

General observations
• The enforcement of EU water and waste legislation is just as important for unblocking
environmental infrastructure investments as the adoption and transposition
of targeted, quality laws and regulations.
• There is a low level of awareness among citizens and businesses of the importance
of compliance with environmental legislation and, even more importantly,
of the benefits of such compliance.
• The inspection culture in SEE is predominantly focused on punishment rather
than prevention, action, education and dialogue.
• The current capacities of inspectorates are relatively weak in terms of numbers,
knowledge and equipment. The police, prosecution and courts have little environmental
expertise. The reform of environmental inspection is an integral
part of a wider regulatory and judicial reform.
• In many cases, the enforcement and regulatory functions of the administration
are not divided.
• In most SEE countries there is a separate water inspectorate, which raises problems
especially with respect to the enforcement of the IPPC Directive.
• Companies lack strong monitoring and reporting systems, which reduces the efficiency
of the inspectors’ work.
Environmental institutions
Human resources capacity
The current capacity of environmental institutions (ministries, agencies etc.) will be
insufficient for the administration of all the requirements arising from the adoption of
the acquis. The increasing volume of environmental legislation will force governments
to alter human resource capacities accordingly, or face understaffing. At the same time,
it is highly probable that ministries of finance will exert pressure in the opposite direction
and call for staff cuts due to budgetary constraints, agreements with IFIs etc.
One of the mistakes made in CEE countries during the EU integration process
was the lack of proper human resources planning linked to the requirements of the
EU acquis. The availability of environmental experts in general, and of environmental
investment experts in particular, is of the utmost importance and governments
should adapt the educational system (including university programmes) to the new situation.
Current staff should also receive training on the new environmental acquis.
Figure 7 illustrates the response of Slovenia to the human resources issue in the
pre-accession and post-accession periods.
In SEE countries there is already an awareness of the institutional challenges,
and the establishment of IPA implementation bodies is an example. This is not
a straightforward process and institutional capacity is a serious problem that has to
be tackled in a targeted way.
C H A P T E R 5
N AT I O N A L S T R AT E G I C A N D I N S T I T U T I O N A L F R A M E W O R K
S T R AT E G I C M O V E S 109