The Regional Secretariat for the Environment and the Sea awarded the status of “environmental compliance” for investment in fishing ports, landing and shelter piers, and several types of projects whose nature will not “have negative impacts on the surrounding environment of these areas.”

With this decision, the Government exempts the obligation of “demonstrating the compliance with the law in terms of the environment” for these projects, which was until now a specific access condition to the funds of the European Fisheries Fund.

In a Normative Order published in the Official Journal today, Álamo Meneses stresses that the need of demonstrating this compliance with the law in terms of the environment “only reduces the rapidness of an administrative procedure which is intended to be rational and effective.”

The installation of beaching place infrastructures, refrigerators and freezers, and of floating piers, the construction of winch houses and of those for fishing gear, the dredging of ports and access canals and the construction of ship repair workshops and of docks for beaching are some of the projects targeted by this measure.

The list of projects awarded the status of “environmental compliance” also comprises the installation of electrical grids and water supply networks, the construction of posts to collect fishing, of slipways and piers, of stone pitching, of prefabricated protection components, as well as of protection breakwaters with a length less than 100 metres in ports which are not environmentally classified.

With this Normative Order, Álamo Meneses also delegated to the Regional Under Secretary of Fishing the ability to decide on the environmental compliance concerning the other construction projects or the repair of land or sea infrastructures in ports, under paragraph 2, article 2 of the Ordinance no. 73/2008, of August 25, after the assessment of the Regional Director for the Environment.