The City Administration of Zrenjanin issued an illegal construction permit to the company Linglong for the construction of a waste storage facility, based on the decision on an environmental impact assessment that was previously annulled by the Provincial Secretariat for Urban Planning and Environmental Protection, following complaints from the associations Građanski preokret and the Renewables and Environmental Regulatory Institute (RERI).
RERI previously announced that the company Linglong illegally built a waste storage facility, without a construction permit and without carrying out an environmental impact assessment procedure. This was confirmed by the competent inspection, stating in response to RERI’s request for an extraordinary inspection that a decision ordering the company to suspend work, remove the illegal facility, and close the construction site was issued in March 2024.
Associations RERI and Građanski preokret filed a complaint with the Provincial Secretariat for Urban Planning and Environmental Protection against the decision of the City Administration of Zrenjanin, which “allowed the company Linglong to construct” (an already constructed) waste storage facility without prior environmental impact assessment study.
Ruling on this complaint, the Provincial Secretariat annulled the decision on June 10 and determined that procedural violations that affected the legality of the decision had been committed. In the explanation, it was stated that it is not clear “which specifics of the project and location were considered by the first-instance authority” when deciding that an environmental impact assessment is not required, and the validity of the allegation from the complaint is confirmed stating that “it is necessary to specify the type of waste that the project developer plans to store, because the decision on the need for an environmental impact assessment depends on the type and the amount of waste.”
Although it is indisputable that the procedure for deciding on the need to prepare a study was carried out illegally and that the decision that represents the epilogue of such a procedure was justifiably invalidated, RERI points out that the very act of initiating such a procedure, for a facility that has already been built, is unfounded (for such facilities, assessment of the impact of the situation as it is). The same is the case with the procedure for issuing a construction permit, which cannot be implemented and applied to facilities whose construction has already been completed (in such cases, the procedures defined by the Law on Legalisation of Buildings are applied).
“In this case too, Linglong confirmed the practice often resorted to by the holders of projects of ‘national importance’ – first the facilities are built, then the necessary permits and approvals are subsequently obtained.” said Dragomir Ristanović, an urban planner from RERI. He explained that although the construction permit issuance procedure is not carried out for already constructed facilities, this procedure was nevertheless carried out, with numerous omissions. “So, for example, with the request for the issuance of a construction permit, the company did not even attach the necessary decision that an environmental impact assessment was not required, which was subsequently cancelled. Instead, the company only sent a notification that the decision was made”, concludes Ristanović.