Graz (OTS) – In today’s Styria issue and on krone.at, the “Kronen Zeitung” reports on a current Court of Accounts report in which the department responsible for environmental impact assessments in the Styrian provincial government is sharply criticized.
From March to July 2022, the Federal Court of Auditors reviewed the handling of environmental impact assessment procedures (EIA) by Department 13 of the Styrian provincial government office. In the audit period for the years 2015 to 2021, the Court of Auditors encountered numerous grievances, according to a report today in the “Kronen Zeitung”.
The most serious point of criticism was flushed to the surface when a good 12,000 e-mails from the department head and the EIA officer were viewed: in at least three cases, project applicants and not the officials are said to have formulated parts of the notifications. In addition, in at least two cases, the A 13 sent draft decisions to project applicants for approval. According to the law, the office may not outsource the preparation of notifications and the implementation of approval procedures to external parties. In this context, the public prosecutor’s office is investigating on suspicion of abuse of office.
According to information from the “Kronen Zeitung”, the Court of Auditors also complained that external experts who were consulted by the A 13 to assess a situation settled their fees directly with the project applicants. The fees should have been paid to the authority, which should also have checked the factual accuracy of the invoices, which also did not happen. Experts were also not, as is usually the case, checked in advance for possible conflicts of interest.
Further points of criticism from the Federal Court of Auditors: The environmental authority had no overview of completed and open EIA procedures. In addition, an environmental impact assessment takes three years in Styria, twice as long as in the other federal states.
Questions & contact:
Oliver Pokorny, MA MBA
Editor-in-Chief “Steirerkrone”
oliver.humble@kronenzeitung.at
