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  Glossary

The European PRTR is the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register established on the basis of the European PRTR Regulation 166/2006/EC, which entered into force in February 2006.

The Regulation has incorporated the provisions of the UN-ECE Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Register under the Aarhus Convention, which was adopted at the Ministerial Conference 'Environment for Europe' in Kiev in May 2003 and has been ratified for the European Union by Council Decision 2006/61/EC.

First Member State reporting to European PRTR is foreseen for Member States in June 2009 for the reporting year 2007.

From EPER to European PRTR

In the field of pollutant emission registers EPER - the first European-wide pollutant emission register for releases from industrial facilities - has been in place since 2000. It has been established by Commission Decision 2000/479/EC to implemented the provisions of article 15 (3) of the IPPC Directive on public accessibility of the results of monitoring.

According to the provisions of the EPER Decision, Member States for the first time in June 2003 delivered data on releases into air and water of industrial facilities for 50 pollutants if threshold values as specified in Annex A1 of the EPER Decision were exceeded.

Since the European PRTR Regulation includes more pollutants and activities than those contained in EPER and since, in addition to releases into air and water, releases to land and off-site transfers of waste have to be reported by the facilities, it has been necessary to upgrade and extend the EPER into a fully comprehensive European PRTR.

As an innovation of the European PRTR in comparison with EPER - according to Article 8 of the European PRTR Regulation - information on releases from diffuse sources shall be included in the reporting where such information exists and has already been reported by the Member States. This shall serve the aim to clarify the relation of releases from large point sources and diffuse sources not covered by the E_PRTR regulation.

Definition of Diffuse Sources According to the definition in the European PRTR Regulation diffuse sources are the many smaller or scattered sources from which pollutants may be released to land, air or water, whose combined impact on those media may be significant and for which it is impractical to collect reports from each individual source Source: EuropeanPRTR Regulation, Art. 2 (12)

The European PRTR-Regulation obliges the European Commission to make this data publicly accessible and to organise it in a way to allow users to search for and identify releases of pollutants from diffuse sources according to an adequate geographical disaggregation and to include information on the type of methodology used to derive the information.

Article 8 (3) requires that - where the Commission determines that no data exist, it shall take measures to initiate reporting on releases from diffuse sources, in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 19 (2).

This website as part of the European PRTR website was created to fulfil this obligation with respect to releases from diffuse sources.

It presents available data for the 91 pollutants listed in the Regulation including greenhouse gases, acidifying substances, ozone precursors, heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants (POP), pesticides, endocrine disruptors, and other dangerous substances.

The diffuse sources where data have been identified include the following sectors: