"Technical and methodological guidelines for the environmental evaluation of Operational Programs" Working Group

The Group has been set up in the course of the plenary meeting of the Network held on February 20, 2001, with a view to formulating guidelines for the evaluation of the environmental component in the Regional Operational Plans.

The setting up of the Group was warranted by the need to fulfill the decisions taken by the Community Support Framework (CSF) Supervisory Committee on November 7, 2000, which entrusted the Network Coordination Unit with the formulation of proposals related to the provisions under 3.3 of the CIPE (Inter-ministerial Committee for Economic Planning) Resolution of August 4, 2000. The fulfillments related to the
"definition by the national and regional Environmental Authorities, in a coordinated effort with the Technical Evaluation and Verification Unit of the MEF-DPS (Ministry of Economy and Finance-Development Policies Department) and the network of the Evaluation and Verification Units of the central and regional administrations provided for by article 1 of Law 144/99, of the technical and methodological guidelines for the evaluation of the environmental aspects of the Operational Plans".

The activity of the Working Group has led to the definition of a methodology for the evaluation of the environmental component of the Operational Plans and the identification of a set of environmental sustainability indicators for the selection of the projects.

In particular, the document is broken down into three parts.

The first part deals with the integration of the ex-ante environmental evaluation, addressing for the most part the Objective 1 Regions, which supplies suggestions and reflections for a new and more comprehensive draft of the ex-ante evaluation fixed by the CSF for 2002. Great attention is paid to both the arrangements for selecting the indicators to be quantified in an additional manner, and the mechanism of close cooperation between the Environmental Authority and the national and regional Environmental Protection Agency (APAT and ARPA).

The second part provides methodological guidelines to single out criteria of environmental sustainability for the selection of the projects. The chapter includes a series of cards, broken down by priority sector and type of measure, which prove a definite operational tool to support the Managing Authorities during the implementation of the measures. Finally, the last part of the document deals with a few problems related to the integration of the environmental aspects in each phase of the process of intermediate evaluation of the structural measures.

RESULTING DOCUMENT:

• Technical and methodological guidelines for the environmental evaluation of Operational Programs [it] (pdf, 3.65 Mb)