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How will SEIS be built?

On 1 February 2008, the Commission adopted a Communication "Towards a Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS)", proposing to improve and streamline the European system for collecting, analysing and reporting environmental information by establishing a Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS).

As announced in the Communication, the Commission in collaboration with the Member States and the European Environment Agency (EEA), is currently preparing a legal proposal focusing more specifically on modernising the way in which the information required by the various reporting obligations and contained in existing Community environmental legislation, is made available. This is to be achieved by taking advantage of modern ICT Internet technology.

The proposal will offer a legal basis for an integrated and sustainable EU-wide eReporting System which will be built as a partnership between the European Institutions (Commission/EEA) and the Member States (MSs). The concept for the EU eReporting system is based on the SEIS principles of a decentralised system and builds on the experience with the implementation of the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) Directive (2007/2/EC) and the US EPA eReporting System. It will be composed of web-based national content registers providing access to the information at national level, and a web-portal operating at EU level. MSs will have the flexibility to build their national registers on a centrally operated content repository or to interconnect existing information systems and content repositories held in various locations. The implementation of the System shall, as appropriate and to the extent possible, make use of already existing eReporting infrastructures, both at EU and Member States levels.

MSs and EEA were consulted on an outline of the legal eReporting instrument for the first time in February 2008 at a meeting of the National Focal Points (NFPs) of the EEA's environmental information network (EIONET). Since then, the legal proposal has been refined in light of various subsequent consultations of the NFPs, EEA's Management Board, the June 2008 Director's meeting on Environment Statistics and Accounts (DIMESA) and the SEIS Task Force of MSs established by the Commission services to assist in the overall implementation of the SEIS.

In parallel to this, the EEA has undertaken a number of country visits on SEIS (21 visited countries so far). This has triggered the gathering, sometimes for the first time, of a great variety of stakeholders within individual Member States, including public administrations at all levels, state, regional and local, thematic sectors such as water bodies authorities, assessment and enforcement bodies, statistical offices, meteorological institutes and cadastre offices to discuss environmental information management issues in Europe and the development of eEnvironment services.

The legislative proposal is due to be presented by the Commission by June 2009.

In addition, the Czech EU Presidency will organise a major Conference in March 2009, where a memorandum on the SEIS and the legal proposal on EU eReporting System will be presented and which could become the basis for Presidency conclusions on this issue.

Due to its distributed concept, the integrated EU eReporting System related to environmental legislation will offer an EU-wide integrated platform where thousands of fragmented environmental information management systems can be plugged in. It will improve the quality of the information as data will be managed as close as possible to the source responsible for that data.

“Information is the currency of democracy”. As it is stipulated in the Directive 2003/35/EC: “Effective public participation in the taking of decisions enables the public to express, and the decision-maker to take account of opinions and concerns which may be relevant to those decisions, thereby increasing the accountability and transparency of the decision-making process and contributing to public awareness of environmental issues and support for the decisions taken”. To achieve effective public participation in the decision-making affecting the environment, the public must have access to environmental information, data and knowledge. The EU eReporting System will contribute to high quality information provision and it will thus provide Europe's backbone infrastructure for eGovernment/eParticipation/eDemocracy services in the environment area; it will also provide a powerful tool to support rapid knowledge-based decision making for sustainable development at all levels (national, regional, local), as integrated information from various realms (economic, social and environmental) will be available on real-time. It will boost competiveness and innovation of European ICT industry. Finally, it will be a substantial contribution of Europe to global e-tools under development in order to support global governance for sustainable development, such as the GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of System).