IMPEL Board Visit to Balkan Countries

The European Union Network for the Implementation and Enforcement of Environmental Law (IMPEL) is honoured to connect environmental experts from 58 public authorities in 37 European countries. The IMPEL Board, after the pandemic period, restarted physical meetings with IMPEL Members in 2023, visiting Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia in 14-16 March 2023.   

The colleagues from the State Environmental Inspectorate (SEI, North Macedonia), the Ministry of Environment, Spatial Planning and Infrastructure (MESPI, Kosovo), and the National Environment Agency (NEA, Albania), kindly hosted, the meetings with the IMPEL Board representatives. IMPEL work and how IMPEL can support and continue to contribute to IMPEL´s mission together was discussed with more than 70 local inspectors and specialists.   

Participation in IMPEL projects has increased over the years and this has shown positive results for the countries with inspectors able to actively participate and exchange views. Expert Team Leaders from IMPEL presented their current work and engaged with the Experts, for further cooperation under IMPEL projects and activities on environmental areas such as waste, air, water, chemicals and nature conservation, for best practice exchange, discussions on implementation challenges, and mutual support.  

Follow up on the actions that resulted from the meeting to further strengthen cooperation by continuing working together and welcome also new Experts to the network was agreed. The National Coordinators gave a follow up in the recent IMPEL’s General Assembly (Swedish EPA, Stockholm, 8-9 June 2023) for their project participation (i.e. nature protection projects, Learned from Accidents Seminar) and their consideration to have a green IRI in the near future. SEI hosted and NPRI meeting Serbia-N.Macedonia in Skopje this May and will host the Water and Land Remediation Workshop in November.