Summary

One of the central principles of administrative procedure is the principle of investigation established in § 6 of the Administrative Procedure Act. According to this principle, it is the duty of an administrative authority to ascertain the essential facts of the matter and, if necessary, to gather evidence on its own initiative for such purpose. The principle of investigation is based on the presumption that, in addition to the interest of the party to the proceedings, the public authority itself must also have an interest in the lawfulness of the administrative act. This means that it is the responsibility of both the party to the proceedings (§ 38 of the Administrative Procedure Act) and the administrative authority conducting the proceedings (§ 6 of the Administrative Procedure Act) to gather evidence relevant to the administrative proceedings.

The article focuses on the application of the principle of investigation to the assessment of the environmental effects of activities affecting Natura 2000 sites (hereinafter ‘Natura Assessment’). The article also examines the content and scope of the decision-maker’s duty to investigate the facts relevant to the Natura Assessment procedure and, more generally, to the achievement of the objectives of the Habitats Directive. In today’s legal environment, disagreements over assessment reports remain without an operational substantive solution for the developer, since according to the case law to date, the decision maker’s refusal to approve an assessment report as a procedural act cannot be challenged separately from the final administrative act. Although the focus of the article is on the Natura Assessment, its conclusions are to some extent transferable to the environmental impact assessment or strategic environmental assessment procedure, as similar issues of the principle of investigation and duty to cooperate arise in these procedures.