Federal Act
on the Protection of the Environment
(Environmental Protection Act, EPA)

¹ Be­fore tak­ing any de­cision on the plan­ning, con­struc­tion or modi­fic­a­tion of in­stall­a­tions, an au­thor­ity must as­sess their im­pact on the en­vir­on­ment at the earli­est pos­sible stage.

² The re­quire­ment of an en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact as­sess­ment ap­plies to in­stall­a­tions that could cause sub­stan­tial pol­lu­tion to en­vir­on­ment­al areas to the ex­tent that it is prob­able that com­pli­ance with reg­u­la­tions on en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion can only be en­sured through meas­ures spe­cif­ic to the pro­ject or site.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil des­ig­nates the types of in­stall­a­tion that are sub­ject to an en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact as­sess­ment; it may stip­u­late threshold val­ues above which the as­sess­ment must be car­ried out. It re­views the types of in­stall­a­tion and threshold val­ues peri­od­ic­ally and ad­justs these if re­quired.