E-PRTR dataflow management Introduction and informal review process Eva Goossens Head of Industrial Pollution Group Air and Climate Change Programme Eionet NRC workshop on Industrial Pollution Copenhagen 4 th March 2015

1.European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) reporting ‐Legal framework ‐Introduction to the technical aspects of reporting ‐Timelines for reporting (MS and EU) 2.EEA’s Informal data review ‐Rationale ‐Focus changes over the years 2009 – – (Incompleteness checks introduced in 2014) Overview of the presentation

E-PRTR reporting – legal framework and technical process 1.Legal framework E-PRTR Regulation (EC) No 166/2006 implementing the Kiev Protocol on PRTR (to the Aarhus convention) Article 7.2: annual reporting on releases and transfers from E-PRTR facilities releases to air, water and/or land above pollutant thresholds (Annex II) off-site transfers of waste water above pollutant thresholds (Annex II) waste transfers above thresholds defined in article 5.1. (b).. ’Bottom-up’ reporting MS reports are compiled on the basis of information reported by operators to the competent authorities 2.Technical process Reporting platform: Eionet’s Reportnet platform = single repository of all submissions XML format Valdiation tool: online and off-line

E-PRTR reporting – MS reporting deadlines Official deadline for MS submissions 31 March (for year-2) or 15 months after the end of the reporting year - Article 7.2.(b) Resubmissions ‐No official provision for data resubmissions ‐Agreed procedure: 31 March = at the same time as submission deadline for the most recent data ‐Rationale: improvement of the data quality of the overall dataset ‐(During the first 5 years also an autumn resubmission)

E-PRTR reporting – EU deadline for publication Official deadline for EU publication: 30 April (for year-2) or within 16 months after the end of the reporting year – Article 7.3.(b) Practise over the years: : early May – early June Reasons: ‐Late deliveries by countries ‐Corrections by countries in April/May (due to substantial mistakes) Commission decision from 2014 onwards: Publication early June allowing for ‐an internal summary digest of the data ‐Ad-hoc data resubmission (only in exceptional cases)

Support to countries in improving the dataset results summarised in an ETC/ACM technical paper 2-stages approach Stage 1: analysis within the E-PRTR dataset ‐Focus on outlier identifications: e.g. mistakes in units by countries skewing the overall statistics ‐Numerous queries analysing the consistency across countries, within sectors, across years (timeseries), etc ‐Development of country-specific Excel files based on the full dataset EEA’s informal review – Early years (1)

Stage 2: comparisons with other datasets ‐Focus on consistency of information with other datasets such as: ‐GHG: EU MM inventory and EU ETS ‐Air Pollutants: CLRTAP/NEC inventories ‐Water pollutants: ‐UWWTP data ‐SoE data on water ‐fisheries information ‐Waste: ‐Eurostat Waste statistics, ‐ transboundary shipment of waste Specifically in 2009: geographical check through a comparison of of the geographical coordinates with the address information EEA’s informal review – Early years (2)

Results after first 3 years ‐re-occuring data reporting mistakes ‐data gaps remaining ‐remaining inconsistencies between bottom-up (E-PRTR) and top- down inventories (NEC/CLRTAP/EU MM) remaining Constraints ‐resource demanding process (EEA & ETC/ACM) ‐lack of information on EU level regarding the capacity or activity level of the facilities (primary data for data quality checking not available at EU level) EEA’s informal review – period (1)

Approach change for : rely on countries for data quality improvement as the holders of all the primary information ‐EEA informal review scaled down to ‐outlier identification and ‐comparison with air pollutant and GHG data ‐Summary information provided to countries in a standardised Word file ‐Full datafiles available for countries to allow for further quality checking at national level ‐No EU summary report EEA’s informal review – period (2)

Incompleteness checks in rational Remaining issues ‐Data outliers due to misreporting (less frequent than in the early years) ‐Data gaps such as ‐Missing release/transfer reports for facilities ‐Missing facilities ‐Large differences regarding pollutants reported in specific sectors (within a country and between countries) ‐Remaining inconsistencies between bottom-up (E-PRTR) and top-down inventories (NEC/CLRTAP/EU MM) ‐Reasons behind the data quality issues are unclear Limited data credibility to use data for ‐policy evaluation, ‐indicators on industrial pollution, etc. Trial for 2014: incompleteness checks Note: all methodology documents, reports, feedback material provided to the countries across the years in the context of the E-PRTR informal review is available at: