Minister of Environment Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine Ruslan Strilets and Minister of Environment Protection, Water and Forests of Romania Barna Tanchos signed the Agreement on the Implementation of the Espoo Convention.
This Agreement applies to the Carpathian region and common transboundary river basins, in particular the Danube Delta, reports Ministry of Environment.
"This is very important, because we have been working towards this for 18 long years," said Strilets. "Finally, Ukraine and Romania will be able to reach an agreement on fulfilling the requirements of the Espoo Convention in the construction of the Danube-Black Sea canal and other joint cross-border projects."
According to him, this is only the first stage of the implementation of the "Road Map", which was developed for Ukraine by the Convention Implementation Committee. Next, it is necessary to do "homework" and conduct numerous consultations with Romania.
He also emphasized that this Agreement is also a European integration step, because it will ensure the fulfillment of Ukraine's international obligations and attests to the political will and readiness to cooperate according to the mechanisms and procedures defined by the Espoo Convention.
The press service noted that the Ministry of Environment team worked on the text of the Agreement together with experts from the European EU4Environment project.
As EcoPolitic reported before, Verkhovna Rada ratified the amendments to the Convention on environmental impact assessment in a transboundary context (Espo Convention).
