2009-09 - IRI Portugal - FINAL REPORT - IMPEL

3. Main Findings
Part A – Defining the regulatory framework of environmental protection in the IMPEL
member country.
Objective
To find out about the organisation of the environmental authority, the relevant
legislation it complies with and relationships with the public, operators government and
other countries.
Overview
Portugal is a democratic republic with four main governing components. They are the
President of the Republic, the Parliament (elected members collectively known as the
Assembly of the Republic), the Government (headed by a Prime Minister) and the
Courts.
A series of thematic Ministries is dedicated to the implementation of relevant EU &
domestic legislation with the Ministry for Environment Spatial Planning & Regional
Development overseeing the work of the reviewed authority: the Environmental &
Spatial Planning General Inspectorate (IGAOT).
This section gives an overview of the organisations that have a direct or indirect role
with regard to environmental protection in Portugal. For the Ministry of Environment,
Spatial Planning and Regional Development and IGAOT a more detailed description is
given. For the partner organisations of IGAOT only a brief description is given including
their relationship with IGAOT.
Ministry for Environment, Spatial planning and Regional Development (MAOTDR)
The Ministry is a government department whose mission it is to define, implement and
coordinate policy for the environment, regional planning and cities and regional
development. It is also responsible for the overall coordination of cohesion policy in
Portugal from the perspective of sustainable development and territorial cohesion. A
group of sub-ordinate administrations (direct & indirect 2 ) have been formed under the
Ministry to implement European & domestic legislation. The relationship between the
administrations are shown in figure 1. Annex 3 gives an overview of all the
administrations.
2 Simply, a direct administration is one where the Minister or the Secretary of State can instruct the
administration to perform a particular task whereas indirect administrations have a degree of autonomy and
the Minister or the Secretary of State have a supervisory role requesting specific tasks to be completed
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