Documents and meetings of the negotations of the PRTR Protocol (2000-2003)

Working Group on PRTRs under the Aarhus Convention Meeting of Signatories

At the first meeting of Signatories to the Convention, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, from 19 to 21 April 1999, a Task Force on pollution inventories or registers was established with the Czech Republic as a lead country to facilitate the implementation of Article 5, paragraph 9, of the Aarhus Convention. The mandate of the Task Force was to prepare recommendations for the future work on PRTR to be presented to the Signatories or Parties in accordance with Article 10, paragraph 2 (i).

The second meeting of Signatories to the Convention, Dubrovnik, Croatia, from 3 to 5 July 2000, welcomed the report of the Task Force on PRTRs as a basis for the development of a legally binding instrument under the Aarhus Convention which would establish in a step-by-step manner coherent, nationwide PRTR systems. Furthermore, the Meeting agreed to propose to the Committee on Environmental Policy that the mandate of the Task Force on PRTRs should be enlarged to that of an open-ended inter-governmental working group, charged with the preparation of such a legally binding instrument, with a view to having the draft instrument ready for adoption at the Fifth Ministerial ‘Environment for Europe’ Conference (Kiev, 2002).

At the seventh session of the Committee on Environmental Policy, Geneva from 25 to 28 September 2000, and arising from the work of the task force on PRTRs, it was decided that an intergovernmental working group will be convened to start the preparation of a legally binding instrument on PRTRs, with a view to the instrument being ready for adoption at the Kiev Ministerial Conference.

PRTR negotiations during the Aarhus Convention Meeting of the Signatories

PRTR negotiations during the Committee on Environmental Policy