Environmental protection? Not at the expense of business

In the Czech Republic, the preparation process of the line construction in the transportation branch takes on average 13 years, far longer than in Germany or Austria. Just the authorization procedure, including the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), lasts twenty months. For this reason and due to the current legislation regarding the EIA and the unpreparedness of its transport constructions, the Czech Republic had to give back to Brussels 1,3 billion euros over the past three years.

That‘s why the Confederation of Industry presented, at the seminary organized in the premises of the Czech Parliament a paper, prepared together with the Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Building Entrepreneurs, appealing to the government to change the current practice and shorten the whole procedure.

„The lengthy authorization procedure represents a serious obstacle to any investment process in the Czech Republic,“ stressed, at the seminary, Bohdan Wojnar,  board member of the Confederation of Industry. „This problem is not encountered by most of the European countries.“

In the opinion of the business representatives, the Czech government should immediately launch a preparation process of a complex change of the authorization procedure. Czech enterpreneurs insist that the environmental protection can’t occur at the expense of the economic growth. Due to the lengthy preparation of its line constructions, the Czech Republic loses investment opportunities worth dozens of billions of CZK every year.