STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT FOR PLANS, PROGRAMS, POLICIES IN ROMANIA: MULTI-CRITERIAL METHOD

The purpose of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is to ensure that environmental considerations inform and are integrated into strategic decision-making in support of environmentally sound and sustainable development. In particular, the SEA process assists authorities responsible for plans and programs, as well as decision-makers. The main benefits of SEA consist in: providing high level of environmental protection, improvement of the quality of plan, program or policy making, increases the efficiency of decision making, facilitation of identification of new opportunities for development, prevention of costly mistakes, increases the overall transparency of strategic decision-making and allows the early consideration of the opinions of key stakeholders in the plan or program making process and facilitation of trans-boundary cooperation. The purpose of this paper is to describe the state of the art of strategic environmental assessment procedure in Europe, the way of its implementation in Romania. This paper also presents a multicriteria method that could be applied for strategic environmental assessment of plans or programs.