Best Prespa

Albania and Greece are neighboring countries and share sensitive ecosystems of internationally recognized importance for their rich biodiversity of species and high ecological values. These two countries are binded by several international legal instruments and have incorporated into their domestic legislation proactive tools such as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Transboundary Environmental Impact Assessment (TEIA) with the aim of enforcing environmental protection both at domestic and in a transboundary context.

However, despite the aforementioned laws and tools, the human pressure in the area is still considered to be high and little is known over the project/activities taking place in these areas and how do they affect the ecosystem as a whole. It is identified a general lack of transboundary studies of assessing, estimating or quantifying the human induced influence, the pressure and its derived impacts on the environment. Furthermore, review of existing literature revealed a total gap regarding information on the practical implementation of the Espoo Convention (Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context, 1991) between Albania and Greece and regarding the current practice and effectiveness of TEIA application in each country respectively.

Aim of BEST-PRESPA project was to investigate what are the main obstacles and difficulties which might hinder the application of TEIA studies between these two countries. Through interviews with a range of key EIA informants the extent of TEIA application between Albania and Greece has been defined. Furthermore this study has identified the main barriers to TEIA implementation in Greece and to some extent in Albania, which were not made available in the existing literature. The study moved one step forward in proposing procedural and technical recommendations which would help future application of TEIAs. Finally in this research are suggested recommendations for further improvement and for future research.