EUROPEAN COMMISSION DIRECTORATE-GENERAL ENVIRONMENT Directorate E Implementation & Support to Member States ENV.E.4 Compliance & Better Regulation 13 th Meeting of the INSPIRE Committee established under Article 22 of Directive 2007/2/EC establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) Friday 8 th December 2017 14:00-16:30 SUMMARY RECORD The thirteenth meeting of the INSPIRE Committee was held in Brussels on 8 December 2017. The list of Member State authorities and observers that participated at this meeting is provided in Annex 1. BG, EE, EL, IE, LU, LV and RO did not attend the meeting. The meeting was chaired by the Deputy Head of Unit of the Unit ENV.E.4 on behalf of the European Commission. Besides sharing information on the progress of several actions the meeting also addressed the update of the Committee Rules of Procedure in line with Regulation (EU) No 182/2011 laying down the rules and general principles concerning mechanisms for control by Member States of the Commission s exercise of implementing powers. No draft Implementing Acts were presented for an opinion of the Committee. 1. WELCOME AND APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA The Chair welcomed the Committee members and presented the meeting agenda and the draft minutes of the 12th Committee meeting. The meeting agenda was adopted. The draft minutes of the 12th Committee meeting (14/06/2017) were adopted without change. 2. REVISION OF IMPLEMENTING RULES, INFORMATION AND DISCUSSION The Chair presented a discussion document (DOC3) to inform the Committee about the status and planning of possible revision of the Decision 2009/442/EC on monitoring and reporting and the Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 and its amendments on interoperability. Building on the outcome of the written procedure that was initiated at the last INSPIRE Committee meeting progress was made on both ongoing revision processes. The majority of Member States were very positive about these initiatives. The revision of the Decision 2009/442/EC on monitoring and reporting has largely been welcomed and no major Commission européenne/europese Commissie, 1049 Bruxelles/Brussel, BELGIQUE/BELGIË - Tel. +32 22991111
issues have been identified which would prevent this revision process. On the possible revision of the Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 and its amendments on interoperability there is also large support to pursue this as long as any amendments have limited impact and lead to a simplification. It is foreseen to present a revised version of the Decision 2009/442/EC on monitoring and reporting for voting in the next meeting of the committee in June 2018. A draft text for the review of Decision 2009/442/EC on monitoring and reporting that was already discussed in the MIG expert group was included in meeting document DOC3 for review and comments. The Chair invited all Member States to internally consult their stakeholders and share any comments on the draft text for the review of Decision 2009/442/EC on monitoring and reporting with the Commission in writing by 15 th February 2018. Thereafter, the Commission will revise and internally consult the document with the aim to share a revised draft of the text in May 2018. Then further feedback can be sent in writing before the 14 th meeting of the INSPIRE Committee in June 2018. A final version for voting in the 14 th INSPIRE Committee shall be made available to Member States minimally two weeks before the meeting. The status of revision of Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 is less mature and following discussions in the MIG expert group it is not yet clear if a substantial amendment or change is needed aside from the already agreed corrigendum. The Commission and Member States experts have agreed several technical actions in the last meeting of the Maintenance and Implementation Group of experts (MIG) on 7/12/2017. The Commission will inform the Committee members of any progress in the next meeting of the Committee to allow further discussion on the desirability to pursue the revision of Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010. If a revision were to be pursued, the most likely date to table a text for the opinion of the Committee will be in December 2018. 3. RULES OF PROCEDURE FOR ENDORSEMENT The Chair presented the context for the need of an additional set of rules of procedure for the INSPIRE Committee and the new rules of procedure (DOC4) put forward for adoption in line with Article 9 of Regulation (EU) No. 182/2011. The Lisbon Treaty, which came into force in December 2009, created the current system of delegated and implementing acts. Legislation which was adopted before then may, in some cases, still be subject to the previous slightly different rules of procedures since the alignment to the new rules is still under negotiation in the European Parliament and the Council (omnibus proposal). Delegated and implementing acts are subject to different procedures for their adoption. A major difference in the respective frameworks is that a Regulation (Regulation (EU) No. 182/2011) has been adopted detailing the process to be followed for adopting an implementing act. This Regulation is relevant for parts of the mandates that the co-legislators gave in the INSPIRE Directive to the European Commission. The INSPIRE Committee is still operating under the Rules of Procedure from 2008/9 which are based on Commission Decision 1999/486. This is appropriate for RPS (Regulatory Procedure with Scrutiny) which applies to Article 4(7) (on the annexes), Article 7(1) (Interoperability data sets and services), Article 16 (network services) and 2
Article 17(8) (sharing with Community institutions and bodies). Until a decision on the Omnibus on delegated acts is reached, these interim arrangements apply. As regards the mandate to the Commission under Article 5(4) (metadata) and Article 21(4) (monitoring and reporting), the REGULATION (EU) No 182/2011 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 16 February 2011 laying down the rules and general principles concerning mechanisms for control by Member States of the Commission s exercise of implementing powers applies. Under this Regulation, separate rules of procedure have to be adopted. These "new" rules of procedures will then be applied in the case of amending the INSPIRE Implementing rules on metadata and monitoring & reporting. Should these new rules of procedures not be adopted in time, the intention of the Commission to amend the 2009 Decision on monitoring and reporting would be delayed since no opinion of the Committee can be requested without the correct rules of procedures. The presented text (DOC4) is based on the standard rules of procedures (as published in OJ C 206 on 12.07.2011, p. 11) with the necessary references which are specific to the INSPIRE Directive. The RPS and the examination/advisory procedures operate under two different legal bases (i.e. Art 5a of Council Decision 1999/468 for RPS, and Art 9 of Regulation 182/2011 for examination/advisory procedures), and the standard rules of procedure agreed for each legal base cannot be combined. Hence, the INSPIRE Committee (as other Committees) will be governed by two sets of rules of procedure depending on what opinion is needed from the Committee (RPS or Regulation 182/2011). In order to clarify this, the Chair proposed to clearly mark in future Committee meeting agendas which rules of procedure will apply. It was mentioned by two Member States that the proposed rules of procedure only cover in Article 2(a) the two implementing rules mentioned in Art. 5 and 21 of the INSPIRE Directive and that the other implementing rules under Articles 4, 7, 16 17 of the Directive have been omitted. The Chair explained that all the other mandates in the INSPIRE Directive, which are currently mandates for this Committee and that are not in the rules of procedure, are part of the Omnibus proposal that is on the table for negotiation between the Council and Parliament whether they should become delegated acts or not. That is a choice that the co-legislators have to make and the Committee will have to wait for the outcome of the negotiations to be able to answer that question more precisely. It was currently not possible to bring current RPS procedures under the implementing rules under Regulation 182/2011 in anticipation of any outcome of the aforementioned negotiations. The Chair supported a suggestion to make the operational process clearer by having two different names for the two sets of rules of procedure. It was proposed to change the title of the new rules of procedure to Rules of procedure for the INSPIRE Committee in line with regulation 182/2011 and change the title of the old rules of procedure to Rules of procedure in relation to apply article 22(3) of the INSPIRE Directive to make reference to the old system. Based on this discussion, some Committee members were not sure that they had the mandate to adopt the proposed new rules of procedure and requested for additional time 3
for internal consultation. Hence, it was suggested to adopt the document by written procedure provided for in Article 9 of the existing rules of procedure. On this basis, the Chair declared that the DOC4 is subject to written procedure and invited all Member States to have their internal consultations and inform the Commission (via mail to the Chair, ENV-INSPIRE@ec.europa.eu in CC) in writing of their opinion by 15 February 2018. If Member States do not reply by the deadline, the Chair will assume their consent on the proposed rules of procedure (DOC4). If Committee members disagree with the adoption of the rules of procedure as presented, the Chair would appreciate a justification. Member States will be informed in writing of the outcome of the written procedure before the next meeting of the Committee. 4. ANY OTHER BUSINESS There was no any other business. The next meeting of the Committee is tentatively scheduled for 22 June 2018. The Chair closed the meeting at 14:58. 4
ANNEX 1 LIST OF PARTICIPANTS MEMBER STATES MS Participant AT BMLFUW BE Informatie Vlaanderen BE Service Public de Wallonie CY Department of Lands and Surveys, Ministry of Interior CZ CENIA, Czech Environmental Information Agency DE Federal Ministry of the Interior DE Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety DK Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency ES National Centre for Geographic Information FI National Land Survey of Finland FR Ministère de l'environnement HR State Geodetic Administration HU BFKH FTFF IT Ministero dell Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare LT State Enterprise "GIS-Centras" LT Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania MT Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) NL Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment PL Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography PT Direção-Geral do Território (DGT) SK Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic SI Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia SE Ministry for the Environment and Natural Resources UK DEFRA LIST OF PARTICIPANTS EUROPEAN COMMISSION and other EU bodies DG Unit DG ENV E.4 - Compliance & Better Regulation DG JRC B.6 - Digital Economy DG CNECT G.1 Data Policy & Innovation EEA IDM4 - Data governance LIST OF OBSERVERS EFTA COUNTRIES EFTA Country Participant IS Ministry for the Environment and Natural Resources NO Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation NO Norwegian Mapping Authority 5