L A T V I A
Rights and responsibilities of the Latvian environmental inspectorate were set forth in the 1990 law on Environmental Protection and State Inspection, which includes detailed provisions concerning environmental permitting. While this law remains in force, the law on the Environmental Protection Committee of the Republic of Latvia, which dates from the same period, has been superseded by the establishment of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development in 1993. Certain powers contained in the Environmental Protection Committee law remain in effect, however, pending the adoption of new legislation. These powers include the right to inspect facilities for compliance with environmental laws and regulations, the power to issue orders against operations in violation of the law, and the right to demand information.
In 1990 Latvia also adopted a law on Natural Resources Taxation. This law recognized that economic instruments can be effectively used to improve environmental protection. Since the economic climate has changed dramatically over the last five years, the government is now drafting a new law to expand the scope of taxation and introduce consumption taxes on certain hazardous products.
Passage of a framework law on environmental protection followed in 1991. As the Latvian Constitution is silent on environmental rights, this law established citizens' basic rights to a healthy environment and environmental information. The law further established state control over pollution-causing industrial and commercial activities, divided responsibilities over environmental questions, and formulated the principle of liability for environmental damages. The law also provided for new instruments for environmental protection, including environmental insurance and certification, but these mechanisms have not yet been implemented.
On the basis of the framework law, Latvia has begun to revise outdated environmental laws and to fill gaps in its environmental framework. Recently passed revisions include the law on Hazardous Wastes (1993) and the law on Specially Protected Natural Areas (1993). The country has also passed a new law on Radiation and Nuclear Safety (1994). The hazardous waste law was significant for its imposition of a total ban on importing hazardous wastes. The law on natural areas included specific provisions relating to the treatment of land that could potentially pass into private ownership during the current period of land reform. Finally, the nuclear safety law, the first of its kind in Latvia, is especially important as Latvia assumes responsibility for nuclear waste from the Salaspils reactor.
Latvia has also ratified a number of international conventions since gaining independence, including the Basel Convention on Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, the 1974 and 1992 Helsinki conventions on protection of the Baltic Sea, the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage, the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (and the Montreal Protocol), the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands Protection, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. A number of other international conventions are in the process of being ratified.
As law reform and privatization continue, Latvia must take a comprehensive ap-proach to environmental protection. A basic goal of the national environmental policy adopted by the Council of Ministers in April 1995 is "the integration of environmental policy into all branches and fields of life (the national economy in general, and in the strategic plans of its various branches, in legislation and above all, in public awareness), thereby creating a basis for sustainable development in Latvia." Recognizing that public participation is important to the realization of this goal and that the legal mechanisms ensuring extensive public participation have not yet been significantly developed in Latvia, there is some discussion within the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development about a possible stand-alone law on public participation, which would be the first of its kind in the region.
P O L A N D
In May, the Polish environment minister issued criteria that stipulates whether investment projects and designs of such projects must be subjected to environmental impact assessments. The official guidelines follow adoption of an EIA system by Poland in 1994.
Poland has also begun the process of setting vehicle emissions standards conforming to EU requirements. Beginning in July 1995, the country issued a partial ban on the registration of new automobiles without catalytic converters, with an exemption, scheduled to be phased out in 1996, for vehicles with engines smaller than 700 cm3.
S L O V A K R E P U B L I C
The government is also drafting a Freedom of Information Act which will likely be sent to parliament for consideration in January or February of 1996. The draft had just become available at press time, so there is no word yet on the assessment of the bill's provisions.