The European Commission has stopped its investigations of complaints and appeals concerning the construction of a massive harbour facility in Vuosaari in the east of Helsinki. The Commission announced its decision already last month in a letter to Ambassador Eikka Kosonen, the permanent Finnish representative to the European Union.
In the letter, Catherine Day, the Commission’s Director-General for the Environment, notes that the Finnish Supreme Administrative Court had ruled that ornithological and scientific criteria had been taken into account when mapping out the area of the proposed harbour.
Day writes that it has not be demonstrated that the impact on nature would be significant, and that the material submitted by those appealing against the harbour did not bring forth any new information to call these conclusions into question.
The Commission plans to submit its reasons for closing the Vuosaari file to the Petition Committee of the European Parliament.
The Petition Committee of the European Parliament had been approached by the Finnish League for Nature Protection (SLL), which has been highly critical of the Vuosaari harbour project.
Helsinki Harbour Manager Heikki Nissinen expressed satisfaction with the Commission’s decision. Sakari Niemelä, the lawyer representing SLL in the case, was disappointed by the decision. He noted that the Commission’s main task is to monitor the equal application of EU law in the various member states.
"Especially important is scrutiny over the highest national courts. Equality would be jeopardised if environmental regulations are applied more loosely in some countries."
Niemelä feels that the issue is not yet over: "The European Parliament will now evaluate its own view on the basis of the Commission’s statement, and we certainly do not feel that the final result of the debate in the Parliament would be meaningless."
