BiH DELEGATION INVITED TO EXPERT COMMISSION MEETING AS FORMALITY

DVOR, SEPTEMBER 30 /SRNA/ – Croatia invited a BiH delegation as a formality to a meeting of the Advisory Expert Commission for assessing the environmental impact of a radioactive waste disposal centre at Trgovska Gora, which is not in accordance with the ESPOO Convention, said Ljiljana Stanišljević, a representative of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction and Ecology of Republika Srpska.

She pointed out that they received the invitation to the meeting on Friday and had only three working days to prepare. "We were not provided with any materials, even though we requested them. We also requested the composition of the commission, but did not receive it. Today at the meeting, the transboundary impact was not presented; it was said to be negligible, which is not true," said Stanišljević, who attended the first meeting of the Advisory Expert Commission in Dvor today. According to her, a joint position will be presented to the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction and Ecology, as the contact point for the Espoo Convention, and the Expert Team after the first review of the environmental impact study. "The study is extensive, the commission has 16 members who will review it and provide initial comments. We intend to ask on what basis the transboundary impact was assessed as negligible or very small and how they reached such a conclusion," said Stanišljević, who heads the Department for Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Permits. She said that the environmental impact study will be made available by the end of the year, while large number of remarks by commission members is encouraging. "We will do our best to maintain our focus, provide our citizens with objective information, and fight this all the way to the end," Stanišljević said. Borislav Bojić, coordinator of the Expert and Legal Team, believes that the invitation for BiH representatives to attend today’s meeting was clearly only a formality, given that they had not been provided with any materials. "The conditions in the session room were such that it was difficult to follow the meeting. Regardless, in the interest of our citizens, we are here to gather as much information as possible and make it available to the Expert and Legal Team and the international expert firm representing us," Bojić said. He said they would request the minutes of today’s meeting and that comments concerning the entire course of the proceedings would be submitted in writing. "We diverted attention that we are not observers but an interested and affected party. The planned facility has a greater impact on our territory than on Croatian one. We are not waiving any rights arising from international conventions that belong to us, so that in the further proceedings we can present our position and defend the positions of all institutions of government of Republika Srpska, the Federation of BiH, BiH, and local communities that the construction of such a facility is unacceptable for BiH," Bojić said. As explained today, the meeting was organised by Croatia’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and Green Transition, which serves as the contact point for the Espoo Convention. The invitation sent to BiH representatives stated that, due to space and organisational constraints, a maximum of two participants from BiH could attend. Before the meeting, commission members visited Čerkezovac, the site planned for the storage of radioactive and institutional waste. Journalists were allowed to visit Čerkezovac but were not permitted to attend the meeting.