Towards an improved assessment of environmental compliance assurance : results of the scoping phase study report

In line with the Juncker Commission priorities, more emphasis on Member States' national compliance assurance systems is needed at EU level. Environmental compliance assurance systems in the Member States should be consistent, coherent, and effective in guaranteeing a uniform application of EU environmental legislation and a level playing field for businesses. The European Commission has the responsibility of overseeing the effective application, implementation and enforcement of all existing pieces of EU legislation, including environmental legislation. Member States, for their part, are obliged to implement EU environmental legislation fully and correctly. The recent Environmental Implementation Review (EIR), with country-specific reports for the EU-28, has shown the need to do more to promote the effectiveness of environmental compliance assurance systems. The EIRs identified a number of underlying root causes for poor implementation, including insufficient compliance assurance mechanisms at Member State level. Responsible authorities (whether national, regional or local) sometimes have very limited resources available to ensure proper law enforcement and thus need access to relevant knowledge and tools on environmental compliance assurance elsewhere. This has led to a demand for EU-level guidance and best practice on environmental compliance assurance in the Member States. However, so far there is no comprehensive set of assessment criteria or framework at EU level to allow for the systematic evaluation of the organisation and effectiveness of national environmental compliance assurance systems. This study contributes to improving the knowledge gap on compliance assurance and compliance assurance systems in the EU-28. The study explores options and identifies possible solutions for assessing how environmental compliance assurance works in the EU Member States. The study starts by reviewing the policy context surrounding the issue of environmental compliance assessment, highlighting the role of the Commission and the Member States. It then identifies existing frameworks at the European and Member State level through a literature review and highlights existing best practices. Drawing on existing EU and Member State examples and identified good practices, the study then defines a conceptual framework for assessment of national environmental compliance assurance systems. The study proposes possible tools for the application of the suggested assessment framework. These include: - a horizontal scoreboard for the Member State and a sector-specific scoreboard for each sector, allowing for flexibility in terms of particular sector challenges in the country-specific context - a traffic light scoring system that assesses the extent to which a Member State has established appropriate compliance assurance systems, enabling comparison (benchmarking) across Member States.