The Conclusions of the TAI Europe Regional Report

1. The Conclusions of the TAI Europe Regional Report

2. Number of Case Studies

3. Methodological Shortcomings • enormous amount of resource materials • European TAI teams used different versions for their assessments • shift of TAI methodology to a web-based version in 2005 • comparability of national research findings • judgments of particular situations made by national TAI coalitions • less information being available in English than in national languages

4. Conclusions - Access to Information • Emergency: serious shortcomingsregarding both the content of information during and after an emergency (lack of data on long term impacts) and their distribution (efforts to reach the mass media) • Monitoring: assistance to interpretation of monitoring data by visual tools and supplementary information is seldom in place • SOE: widely known and used in the region • Facility: facility reports are often presented in the form of pure statistics and tables delivered separately for each substance & a lack of publicly accessible pollution registers

5. Conclusions – Participation in Decision-making • public participation functions mostly as an opportunity for the public to comment on draft decisions, especially on policy level • Policy: not much effort vested in putting information into simple language and trying to get input from the general public • Project: lack of communication of information to marginalized socioeconomic or cultural groups and public participation in decisions on renewal, extension, modification or termination of projects

6. Conclusions – Justice & Capacity Building • Justice: law does not provide the capacity to enable effective execution of right to justice • Capacity: blank spots regarding the training of government and judicial officials in facilitating access