One of the main goals of the Directive 85/337/EEC, on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment (“EIA Directive”), expressed in its Preamble, is to ensure that projects that are likely to have significant environmental impact proceed only after prior assessment of their likely effect on the environment, based on appropriate information supplied by the developer and with proper avenues for public participation. The European Court of Justice (ECD) repeatedly narrowed down the (originally large) scope of discretion of the member states in deciding whether a project shall be subject to EIA or not by requiring the environmental impact assessment for any project which is likely to have serious impacts de facto.
Central to this article is a description of the typical and most important gaps of implementation of the EIA directive, emerging from the specific traffic infrastructure cases. Prior to that, some general remarks on the typical characteristics and problems concerning transposition of the EIA Directive are made.
