Introduction
| Author | Sara Bouchon |
| Profession | Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen |
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This report is based on a research carried out in the context of the COMPASS Institutional Activity (Action n. 4335-Vulnerability and Integrated Risk Assessment) as a contribution to the EU-Integrated Project "Orchestra" (Open Architecture and Spatial Data Infrastructure for Risk Management). The aim of Orchestra is defined as following: "to improve the efficiency in dealing with risks by developing an open service architecture for risk management, that is based on de-facto and de-jure standards. The goals are [among others] to design an open service-oriented architecture for risk management, to develop the software infrastructure for enabling risk management services, to deliver an infrastructure integrating spatial and non-spatial services for risk management". The Sub-project 2 on "User Requirements and Policy watch" aims at defining the main requirements of the Orchestra architecture. In association with the definition of User Requirements, the identification of existing policies, which can have an impact on the definition of the ORCHESTRA architecture, is the first step to provide the scope for the Services Implementation sub-project.
The state-of-art of the existing legislation has been a preliminary work to the definition of the main information required for the implementation of the policies and which had to be integrated as necessary requirements in the Orchestra architecture (see Annex 3.7).
EU-policies are the final output of three main processes:
(1) The assessment of the existing situation regarding existing risks within the European Union;
(2) The definition of the priority issues, the Commission needs to address;
(3) The policy-making process establishing the legislative text addressing these issues. Policies are thus a useful source of information to better understand the existing risk landscape, the main issues it raises and the strategies the European Commission has chosen to addressee these issues.
Obviously, the implementation of policies contributes to modify the situation in each field, modifying one or several aspects, in order to achieve the aims set in the legislation. The statement on a given situation, on which each policy was built, is thus led to evolve. A report aiming at identifying existing policies could thus appear valid just for a short lag of time. However, a great number of policies remain in force for a very long time, while the new legislation is provided, taking into account the existing legislation, either complementing or modifying it. The procedure of amendment is the main procedure to carry out this process. The existing legislation needs thus to be well-known, since it forms the ensemble of the "Acquis Communautaires."
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The concept of "risk" has to be here understood in a general way as "the expected losses from a given hazard to a given element at risk" (Coburn A.W., Spence R.J.S., Pomonis A. 2001). The European Union suffers regularly from major natural and technological disasters.
Some examples of major natural and technological disasters in Europe:
Earthquakes: (1980 Italy, 2739 dead; 1976 Italy, 977 dead; 1953 Greece, 455 dead, 1999 Greece and Turkey;).
Floods :( 1973 Spain, 350 dead; 1963 Spain, 500 dead; 1962 Germany, 400 dead).
Landslides (1998 Italy, 159 dead; 1976 United Kingdom, 144 dead; 1963 Italy 1759 dead).
Storms : (Nordic countries, France, Germany, Austria - 1999, Sweden, Estonia, 2004) Forest fires (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece).
Technological disasters (1994 Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Estonia shipwrecked, 865 dead; 1988 U.K. North Sea oil platform Explosion, 167 dead; 1987 Belgium, Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster, 193 dead; 2000 Netherlands, Spain - explosions in fireworks plants; 2000 Eastern and Central Europe - cyanide pollution of the Danube)
Major marine pollution incidents: (off the French coast: Erika - 1999, Ievoli Sun - 2000; off the coast of Denmark: Baltic Carrier - 2001).
The EU-legislation addressing risk is not immediately identifiable, as the legislation addressing other fields, e.g. "agriculture" or "economy". There is no classification of the existing legislation, which provides an entry associated with "risk". This is mainly due to the great heterogeneity of the risk domain, e.g. distinguishing different types of natural risks, technological risks, etc. Furthermore, the policies addressing risks issues may sometimes have a wider scope. For instance, the Water Framework Directive is classified under the "environment" field, since its scope deals with the environmental aspects related to water, including the prevention of floods. Each policy is thus classified under other fields such as "transportation", "energy", "environment", "security policy", "public health", "regional policy", etc. The first objective was therefore to retrieve among existing policies, the ones addressing risks, in order to provide an overview of the existing legislation in a comprehensible way for all interested parties. The aim is to give a better understanding of the legislative issues that decision makers, experts or other stakeholders have to deal with.
Having an overview of the existing EU-legislation addressing risks is especially relevant for the COMPASS research activity. Concepts such as "systemic risks" or "emerging risks" imply having a good knowledge on different risks and their interactions. On top of that, since the risk assessment has now to include hazards and threats, such as the terrorist threat or other intentional acts, the importance of the vulnerability assessment is greater.
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Vulnerability assessment requires a multi-risk approach, beyond the classical sectored approach. Therefore, researchers, stakeholders involved in the risk management need to have an overview of the risk landscape, including understanding the impact of existing policies. The second objective is thus to identify the main implications of the existing regulatory frame on the risk management processes.
However, the existing legislative frame does not address yet all the aspects of the risk management process. Furthermore, as it has been underlined, the risk landscape is evolving and requires thus new policies. The attempt to identify gaps in the existing legislation, as well as the main challenges for the coming policies constitutes therefore the last objective of this report.
In the framework of the Treaty establishing the European Community, Community law, adopted by the Council - or by the Parliament and the Council, in the framework of the co-decision procedure - may take the following forms:
The Directives bind Member States as to the objectives to be achieved within a certain time-limit, while leaving the national authorities the choice of form and means to be used. Directives have to be implemented in national legislation, in accordance with the procedures of the individual Member States.
The Regulations are directly applicable and are binding in all EU Member States without the need for any national implementing legislation.
The Decisions are binding in all their aspects for those to whom they are addressed. Thus, Decisions do not require national implementing legislation. A decision may be addressed to any or all Member States, to enterprises or to individuals.
The Communications and the Papers are not binding. They provide information about specific topics, in order to draw the frame for the coming legislation.
The legislation under preparation can be monitored through proposals for Resolutions or Directives.
Recognizing the complexity of EU law, several information products and services have been developed to ensure that vital information sources are easily accessible for consultation online. These aim to offer a comprehensive picture of EU legislation and the decision-making procedures from concept to conclusion.
This multilingual database service1 offers to users solutions to the problems associated with legal research, by ensuring full coverage of ever-expanding volumes of source material, such as the Treaties, secondary legislation, international agreements andPage 7 supplementary legislation, case-law, preparatory documents and parliamentary questions. Hypertext links are provided to related acts including subsequent modifications, earlier acts and even references to national implementing legislation. Registration is required for access to Celex.
This service was set up by the EU institutions2 to make EU law available to members of the public. It provides in all the official EU working languages, the latest issues of the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ) L and C series, together with those only published in electronic format. The collection is updated daily. The site also offers the Treaties, EU legislation in force and the texts of consolidated legislation, proposals for legislation and a link to recent judgments and orders of the European Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance.
This is an information, monitoring, forecasting and research tool3 for inter-institutional legislative procedures, activities of the institutions and part-sessions of the European Parliament. This site is hosted on the server of the European Parliament. The information contained is in English and French.
Pre-Lex follows4 the major steps of the decision-making process between the Commission and the other institutions by providing information on the stage of the procedure, the decisions of the institutions, contact names, responsibles of institutional services, references of documents, etc.
Pre-Lex is managed by the Secretariat-General of the Commission. It monitors the work of the various institutions involved (European Parliament, Council, ESC, Committee of the Regions, Court of Justice, etc.). It follows all Commission proposals (legislative and budgetary files, and conclusions of international agreements) and communications, from their transmission to the Council or to the European Parliament until their adoption or their rejection by the Council, their adoption by Parliament or their withdrawal by the Commission. While Pre-Lex does not itself contain the documents, links connect directly to the texts, which are available electronically (COM documents, OJ, Bulletin of the European Union, documents of the European Parliament, press releases, etc.).
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The first part of this report aims at giving a synthetic overview of the existing legislation addressing risks related to transportation, industry and chemical substances, energy, terrorism, environment and the EU-legislation concerning the civil protection, after having recalled the research context (2.1 and 2.2). It is then followed by the analysis of the existing "Acquis communautaires" in the field of risks and their implications for the risk management process (2.3.). Main challenges for the coming legislation are then detailed, with a focus on the security issues (2.4.).
The second part refers to the annexes, giving a detailed state-of-the-art of the existing legislation for each mentioned field of risks (3.1 to 3.6). The last annexe is based on the analysis of the information's requirements set by the EU-policies, which is the contribution for the above mentioned project Orchestra.
Finally, a detailed list of references is provided for those, who are interested to go deeper into the legislation (4.1 to 4.8).
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[1] http://europa.eu.int/celex
[2] http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex
[3] http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/dors/oeil/en/search.shtm
[4] http://europa.eu.int/prelex/apcnet.cfm?CL=en
