Regulation (EC) No 166/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 January 2006 concerning the establishment of a European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register and amending Council Directives 91/689/EEC and 96/61/EC (Text with EEA relevance)

Article 1

Subject matter

This Regulation establishes an integrated pollutant release and transfer register at Community level (hereinafter ‘the European PRTR’) in the form of a publicly accessible electronic database and lays down rules for its functioning, in order to implement the UNECE Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (hereinafter ‘the Protocol’) and facilitate public participation in environmental decision-making, as well as contributing to the prevention and reduction of pollution of the environment.

Article 2

Definitions

For the purposes of this Regulation the following definitions shall apply:

(1) ‘the public’ means one or more natural or legal persons, and, in accordance with national legislation or practice, their associations, organisations or groups;

(2) ‘competent authority’ means the national authority or authorities, or any other competent body or bodies, designated by the Member States;

(3) ‘installation’ means a stationary technical unit where one or more activities listed in Annex I are carried out, and any other directly associated activities which have a technical connection with the activities carried out on that site and which could have an effect on emissions and pollution;

(4) ‘facility’ means one or more installations on the same site that are operated by the same natural or legal person;

(5) ‘site’ means the geographical location of the facility;

(6) ‘operator’ means any natural or legal person who operates or controls the facility or, where this is provided for in national legislation, to whom decisive economic power over the technical functioning of the facility has been delegated;

(7) ‘reporting year’ means the calendar year for which data on releases of pollutants and off-site transfers must be gathered;

(8) ‘substance’ means any chemical element and its compounds, with the exception of radioactive substances;

(9) ‘pollutant’ means a substance or a group of substances that may be harmful to the environment or to human health on account of its properties and of its introduction into the environment;

(10) ‘release’ means any introduction of pollutants into the environment as a result of any human activity, whether deliberate or accidental, routine or non-routine, including spilling, emitting, discharging, injecting, disposing or dumping, or through sewer systems without final waste-water treatment;

(11) ‘off-site transfer’ means the movement beyond the boundaries of a facility of waste destined for recovery or disposal and of pollutants in waste water destined for waste-water treatment;

(12) ‘diffuse sources’ means the many smaller or scattered sources from which pollutants may be released to land, air or water, whose combined impact on those media may be significant and for which it is impractical to collect reports from each individual source;

(13) ‘waste’ means any substance or object as defined in Article 1(a) of Council Directive 75/442/EEC of 15 July 1975 on waste (¹);

(14) ‘hazardous waste’ means any substance or object as defined in Article 1(4) of Directive 91/689/EEC;

(15) ‘waste water’ means urban, domestic and industrial waste water, as defined in Article 2(1), (2) and (3) of Council Directive 91/271/EEC of 21 May 1991 concerning urban waste water treatment (²), and any other used water which is subject, because of the substances or objects it contains, to regulation by Community law;

(16) ‘disposal’ means any of the operations provided for in Annex IIA to Directive 75/442/EEC;

(17) ‘recovery’ means any of the operations provided for in Annex IIB to Directive 75/442/EEC.

Article 3

Content of the European PRTR

The European PRTR shall include information on:

(a) releases of pollutants referred to in Article 5(1)(a) that must be reported by the operators of the facilities carrying out the activities listed in Annex I;

(b) off-site transfers of waste referred to in Article 5(1)(b) and of pollutants in waste water referred to in Article 5(1)(c), that must be reported by the operators of the facilities carrying out the activities listed in Annex I;

(c) releases of pollutants from diffuse sources referred to in Article 8(1), where available.

Article 4

Design and structure

The Commission shall publish the European PRTR, presenting the data in both aggregated and non-aggregated forms, so that releases and transfers can be searched for and identified by:

(a) facility, including the facility's parent company where applicable, and its geographical location, including the river basin;

(b) activity;

(c) occurrence at Member State or Community level;

(d) pollutant or waste, as appropriate;

(e) each environmental medium (air, water, land) into which the pollutant is released;

(f) off-site transfers of waste and their destination, as appropriate;

(g) off-site transfers of pollutants in waste water;

(h) diffuse sources;

(i) facility owner or operator.

The European PRTR shall include links to the following:

(a) the national PRTRs of Member States;

(b) other relevant existing, publicly accessible databases on subject matters related to PRTRs, including national PRTRs of other Parties to the Protocol and, where feasible, those of other countries;

(c) facilities' websites if they exist and links are volunteered by the facilities.

Article 5

Reporting by operators

The operator of each facility that undertakes one or more of the activities specified in Annex I above the applicable capacity thresholds specified therein shall report the amounts annually to its competent authority, along with an indication of whether the information is based on measurement, calculation or estimation, of the following:

(a) releases to air, water and land of any pollutant specified in Annex II for which the applicable threshold value specified in Annex II is exceeded;

(b) off-site transfers of hazardous waste exceeding 2 tonnes per year or of non hazardous waste exceeding 2 000  tonnes per year, for any operations of recovery or disposal with the exception of the disposal operations of land treatment and deep injection referred to in Article 6, indicating with ‘R’ or ‘D’ respectively whether the waste is destined for recovery or disposal and, for transboundary movements of hazardous waste, the name and address of the recoverer or the disposer of the waste and the actual recovery or disposal site;

(c) off-site transfers of any pollutant specified in Annex II in waste water destined for waste-water treatment for which the threshold value specified in Annex II, column 1b is exceeded.

The operator of each facility that undertakes one or more of the activities specified in Annex I, above the applicable capacity thresholds specified therein, shall communicate, by electronic means, to its competent authority the information identifying the facility in accordance with the format referred to in Article 7(2) unless that information is already available to the competent authority.

In the case of data indicated as being based on measurement or calculation the analytical method and/or the method of calculation shall be reported.

The releases referred to in Annex II reported under point (a) of this paragraph shall include all releases from all sources included in Annex I at the site of the facility.

In providing this information operators shall specify, where available, any data that relate to accidental releases.

Article 6

Releases to land

Waste which is subject to ‘land treatment’ or ‘deep injection’ disposal operations, as specified in Annex IIA to Directive 75/442/EEC, shall be reported as a release to land only by the operator of the facility originating the waste.

Article 7

Reporting by Member States

Article 8

Releases from diffuse sources

Article 9

Quality assurance and assessment

Article 10

Access to information

Article 11

Confidentiality

Whenever information is considered confidential by a Member State in accordance with Article 4 of Directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (³), the report referred to in Article 7(2) of this Regulation for the reporting year concerned shall indicate separately for each facility which information cannot be made public and provide the reasons for this.

Article 12

Public participation

Article 13

Access to justice

Access to justice in matters relating to public access to environmental information shall be ensured in accordance with Article 6 of Directive 2003/4/EC and, where the institutions of the Community are involved, in accordance with Articles 6, 7 and 8 of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (⁴).

Article 14

Guidance document

The guidance document for implementation of the European PRTR shall address in particular details on the following:

(a) reporting procedures;

(b) the data to be reported;

(c) quality assurance and assessment;

(d) indication of type of withheld data and reasons why they were withheld in the case of confidential data;

(e) reference to internationally approved release determination and analytical methods, sampling methodologies;

(f) indication of parent companies;

(g) coding of activities according to Annex I to this Regulation and to Directive 96/61/EC.

Article 15

Awareness raising

The Commission and the Member States shall promote awareness of the public of the European PRTR and shall ensure that assistance is provided in accessing the European PRTR and in understanding and using the information contained in it.

Article 18

Amendments to the Annexes

The Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 18a to amend Annexes II and III for the following purposes:

(a) to adapt them to scientific or technical progress;

(b) to adapt them as a result of the adoption by the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol of any amendment to the Annexes to the Protocol.

Article 18a

Exercise of the delegation

Article 19

Committee Procedure

The period provided for in Article 5(6) of Decision 1999/468/EC shall be set at three months.

Article 20

Penalties

Article 21

Amendments to Directives 91/689/EEC and 96/61/EC

Article 22

Entry into force

This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.

ANNEX I