This book assembles the papers presented to an international conference convened by the Environmental Law Network International (ELNI) in October 1991 in the Netherlands. The contributions illustrate the influence EC legislation already has on licensing procedures for industrial installations in the Member States of the European Communities. For a number of the most important EC Directives, overviews of the current state of implementation in the Member States are given. This is complemented by country reports on the formal transposition and practical implementation of the obligations arising from EC-Law in selected Member States. In order to be able to assess EC environmental legislation it is highly interesting to look at the legislation in countries outside the European Communities. Reports on the regulation of licensing procedures in the USA and Australia give an impression of how the instrument of Environmental Impact Assessment, which is relatively new to the EC, has proven itself there. Contributions from Hungary and Poland give an overview of recent developments in environmental law, particularly in the field of access to environmental information.
In its proposal for an Eco-Audit Regulation, the EC Commission has drafted a new procedure for the evaluation of the environmental effects of the activities of individual companies. The discussion of this approach forms a further focus of the book.