Highlights

• The amendment to the Act on the Central Animal Shelter aims to secure funding for the construction of the Shelter – a centre whose task will be to temporarily keep animals belonging to endangered, dangerous and protected species, as well as invasive alien species.
• The deregulation Act amending environmental protection law will improve the conditions for conducting business activity, among other things by extending the validity of provisions enabling waste management activities to be carried out on the basis of existing decisions and streamlining the activities of marshal's offices in terms of checking the accuracy of documents related to packaging waste recycling.
• The amendment to the Act on the management system for greenhouse gas emissions and other substances will introduce a mechanism to equalise CO2 emission costs between EU producers covered by the EU emissions trading system and non-EU companies that do not incur these charges. This solution will protect the competitiveness of European companies, including Polish ones. The solution will protect the competitiveness of European companies, including Polish ones.

The primary task of the Central Animal Asylum is the temporary housing of animals that belong to invasive alien species, CITES species, dangerous species and protected species. The asylum cooperates, among others, with customs authorities and the police, as well as institutions involved in animal protection and keeping, such as the Veterinary Inspection authorities, zoos, animal rehabilitation centres and animal shelters.

The amendment to the Act on Environmental Protection Law will extend the testing period for new techniques and innovations in installations applying for integrated permits with relaxed environmental requirements to 30 months. After this period, installations will have to achieve a level of environmental protection compliant with best available techniques (BAT). This solution stems from the provisions of the revised Industrial Emissions Directive (so-called IED 2.0).

Marshal's offices will also not have to repeat checks on documents relating to e.g., packaging waste recycling if they have already been verified by other authorities. This will curb the practice of some companies issuing unreliable documents and closing down their operations before inspections are carried out.

The amendment to the Act on the management system for greenhouse gas emissions and other substances will enable the introduction of the CBAM mechanism, which will eliminate the competitive advantage of producers from non-EU countries placing products on the European market. At present, they are not subject to the charges incurred by Polish and European businesses under the EU ETS. The mechanism also encourages emission reductions outside the EU and eliminates cost differences between products manufactured in the EU (subject to the costs of participating in the ETS) and products imported from outside the EU.