Shortly before the end of the legislative period, the federal government also pushed the reforms of the Federal Nature Conservation Act and the EIA Modernisation Act through parliament.

The two laws are expected to come into force before the end of summer 2017.

On 22 June 2017, the Bundestag passed the draft bill amending the Federal Nature Conservation Act (printed matter 18/11939). The resolution recommendation of the Environment Committee was followed with a few supplementary requirements. The new version of § 44 BNatSchG is likely to be of interest to landscape architects. In § 44 "regulations for particularly protected and certain other animal and plant species" will be of particular interest. A consolidated reading version of the new BNatSchG is not yet available.

• On request, we can provide bdla members with the presentation "New Law and Current Tasks of Environmental Planning - The Amendment of Nature and Species Protection Law" by Dr. Stefan Lütkes (BMUB) dated 12 May 2017.

On 29 June 2017, the Bundestag also adopted the draft law on the modernisation of the law on environmental impact assessment (printed matter 18/11499) as amended by the Environment Committee (printed matter 18/12994). This was triggered by the European EIA Amendment Directive to be transposed into German law. In the course of this procedure, the Federal Government also sought a fundamental "clean-up" of the UVPG. In this respect, the proposed legislation substantially modifies planning practice. Parts of the reform were controversial within the Federal Government until the very end. This disagreement led to the Bundestag adopting a motion for a resolution by the CDU/CSU and SPD (printed matter 18/13017) against the vote of the opposition. This resolution calls on the Federal Government to inquire with the European Commission whether the EU Directive on Environmental Impact Assessment allows the requirement for assessment of certain projects to be made dependent on whether the project is to be implemented at a specific location (EMAS register).

• On request, we can provide bdla members with the conference presentation "UVPG 2017 - The Implementation of the EIA Amendment Directive and Consequences for Approval and Permitting Projects" by Dr. Christof Sangenstedt (BMUB) from 12 May 2017.

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