Environmental Impact Assessment

Abstract

The legal nature of the environmental impact statement, as well as the relation between the environmental impact assessment procedure and the procedure where final permission or authorization will be given, raises some judicial procedural issues. 

In this text, we will analyse the question of judicial challenging of the environmental impact statement and, after concluding that it is an administrative act, submitted to the discipline of challenging administrative acts, the consequences of it´s judicial challenging. 

The relation between the environmental impact assessment procedure and the permission or authorization procedure implies the possibility of challenging the environmental impact statement in the same legal action where final decision of administrative permission procedure is challenged, despite the eventual failure to meet the time limit for bringing an action against the environmental impact statement. 

We intend to analyse it under the framework of challenging administrative acts before courts alleging illegalities committed during the administrative procedure, including administrative acts practised during the procedure and, in this regard, related issues, as legitimacy of the defendant in the context of that judicial action. 

Judicial control of administrative acts carried out in the environmental impact assessment procedure will also be focused, taking into account administrative discretion activity, establishing a distinction between administrative discretion in the proper sense and technical administrative discretion, a distinction that appears essential in the line of jurisprudential evolution regarding the limits of judicial control of administrative discretion activity.