The Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) has ruled in favour of the European Commission, which sued Slovakia for failing to fulfil its obligations in the area of flood risk.
"The verdict that concerns the misconduct of previous governments doesn't contain any financial sanctions," stated the Environment Ministry on Thursday, stressing that it has prepared measures to quickly remedy the situation.
Environment Minister Tomas Taraba (SNS nominee) noted that Slovakia was supposed to update its flood risk management plans by December 22, 2021, however it failed to do so. "The competent authorities also failed to revise and update the documents that are necessary for the adoption of flood risk management plans, namely flood risk maps," stated Taraba, criticising the ministry's management under Jan Budaj (then OLANO). "We caught up [with the tasks that Slovakia was obliged to fulfil] in early January and we are currently notifying the European Commission about it," underlined Taraba.
In February 2023, the Environment Ministry received an infringement notice from the European Commission for the failure to complete revision of flood risk management plans in line with the Floods Directive demands within the set deadline.
At that time, 15 other EU countries received infringement notices regarding the incomplete revision of their flood risk management plans as well.
Source: TASR
