Final environmental report



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Non technical summary


The Baltic Sea Region (BSR) has presented a draft programme for the transnational co-operation in the "Baltic Sea Region Interreg Programme 2007-2013" (the BSR Programme). This report is an environmental assessment of the draft BSR Programme.

The environmental context in which the BSR Programme is proposed for implementation is briefly described in the report on the basis of the Kiev Report from 2003, describing the major features of the European environment. The Environmental Policy Context in which the BSR Programme is proposed is also described in this report. This environmental assessment is based on the requirements in the SEA Directive requiring that national and interregional plans and programmes are assessed prior to their adoption

The likely significant environmental impacts of the Baltic Sea Programme 2007-2013 are assessed at three levels:


  1. Assessment of the aim, objectives and priorities

  2. Assessment of the directions for support given in the text describing each of the priorities

  3. Selection criteria for the proposed activities

This report assesses, as described below, the two first levels of the BSR Programme, even though the abstract and non-substantial nature of the BSR Programme makes it difficult to carry out an effective assessment. The third level of assessment cannot be carried out until a further refinement of proposed initiatives has taken place. Therefore, the report recommends guidelines for the environmental assessment of project applications.

This focus on sustainability and environment indicates that the impact on the environment should be considered carefully during the implementation of the programme. This is also the case for the majority of the priorities proposed.

It has only been possible to identify relevant environmental issues and criteria to be considered in the environmental assessment for a limited number of the directions for support given in the text under each priority area. There are two reasons for this:


  • The characteristics of the directions for support.

  • The level of detail in the description of the directions for support

More than half of the directions for support relate to activities which can be characterised as process designs aiming at changing processes and/or working modes of different societal segments in specified directions. Basically, it is not possible to identify the likely significant environmental impacts for this type of activities. An environmental assessment of these initiatives may only meaningfully be carried out when possible specific downstream activities are formulated.

The remaining part of the directions for support relate to what can be called project design, where it, in principle, will be possible to assess the likely environmental impacts. However, this requires a certain level of details in the description of the directions for the activities. Only around half of the directions of activities relating to project designs are described sufficiently detailed to assess their likely significant environmental effects.

None of the directions for support are described sufficiently detailed to give a quantitative assessment. All assessments are qualitative assessing if the impact is likely to be positive, neutral or negative.

All the directions for support it has been possible to show, with a few exceptions, a positive impact on the relevant environmental issues.


  1. Introduction


The environmental assessment of the Baltic Sea Programme 2007-2013 presented in this environmental report is prepared based on the Draft Operational Programme version 3, dated 3. July 2006.

The environmental report follows the SEA scoping report issued in June 2006, where the environmental issues, objectives and indicators relevant for the environmental assessment were identified. The scoping report was submitted to the national environmental authorities in the countries under the Baltic Sea Region Programme for comments. Very few comments were received and to the extent possible the received comments have been accommodated by the inclusion of the following items:



  • An environmental baseline description based on the latest report on the status of the environment in Europe

  • brief account of the EU Environmental Policy Framework

  • an assessment of the relevance and consistency of the proposed BSR Programme to the EU Environmental Policy Framework
    1. Comments received during consultation of draft Environmental Report


National consultation of the draft Environmental report took place from July to the end of October 2006. Consultations were launched simultaneously in all countries covered by the programme, however the length of the consultation period differed form country to country because of differences in the national legal frameworks.

Submissions were received from Norway, Finland, Swede, Germany, and Denmark. Few of the comments received were directly related to the contents of the draft Environmental Report. Some of these comments have given rise to amendments of the Environmental Report. The amendments incorporated in this report are:



  • assessment of the 0-alternative (likely significant environmental impacts from not adopting the programme as is)

  • insertion of a new appendix IV to this report containing an account of all submissions received from consultation

  • clarification of some headings employed in the draft Environmental Report (heading of chapter 4) and some of the headings employed in appendix II)

  • insertion of this section containing a brief account of the amendments to the Environmental Report

Comments to the draft Environmental Report not incorporated in the report were concentrated on:

  • the environmental objectives against which the assessment were carried out should have included regional environmental objectives (specific reference to HELCOM objectives) as well as to national environmental objectives

The reason for not including the environmental objectives adopted by regional and national authorities/organisations is that the rather abstract nature and lack of precision in the directions for support, as well as in the definition of strategic projects, did make it relevant to include further environmental objectives than those adopted at the European Community level.

It was specifically assessed during the environmental assessment phase that the inclusion of these additional environmental objectives would not lead to a further identification of probable and likely significant environmental impacts.

Other comments received that affects the way in which the integration of environmental considerations could be catered for in the implementation of the BSR Operational Programme


  • the downstream assessment procedure proposed in chapter 7 of this report should be incorporated into the Project Manual as well being highlighted in the Implementation Chapter of the final BSR Operational Programme.


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