MEPs throw out petition over development zone changes

The European Parliament has rejected a petition to launch an investigation into whether the 2006 "rationalisation" of development boundaries breached EU law.

The decision follows a pronouncement by the European Commission that it had "not found any evidence of the petitioner's claims that Malta had breached the provisions of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (SEA)".

The Parliament's Petitions Committee decided to close the issue and reject the call for an investigation.

The decision comes three months after the Commission closed its infringement procedure against the Maltese authorities over the same issue, having found no fault with the way building development zones were extended by Mepa in 2006.

The directive specifies that plans or projects that could have substantial environmental effects should be subject to an impact assessment before being adopted. This was not done in the case of the rationalisation process but the government had argued that this was not necessary because the process had started before the SEA Directive became effective in Malta.

The EP Committee had received the petition from Lucienne Pace of Birżebbuġa in 2007 following the Maltese Parliament's approval of changes to the development boundaries as part of the revision of the Structure Plan.

The Committee said that, following an assessment of the information it had received from the Maltese authorities, it appeared that the scheme rationalisation exercise was an integral part of the local plan processes.

"Given that all the local plans were initiated and submitted to the legislative procedure before the cut-off date set under article 13(3) of the SEA Directive, it appears that the requirement to undertake an environmental assessment was not applicable.

"Given that the Commission has been unable to conclude a potential breach of the SEA Directive, it sees no reason to take any further action regarding the issues raised in the petition," the Committee said.

The issue had been taken to EU level following complaints by Alternattiva Demokratika and a number of individual citizens to both the Commission and the European Parliament.

They had claimed that the rationalisation process was not carried out according to the SEA Directive. On the basis of those complaints, the Commission had decided to start a so-called infringement procedure by giving the government formal notice that it would investigate the allegations.