Land recovery and man-made risks: a perspective from the EU accession countries

This paper presents the results of a workshop held in Vienna in November 1998 to study the recovery of land in Easter European countries polluted by industrial spoil, military activities and improper handling of hazardous wastes, a topic which is of particular importance to these countries, emerging as they are from a period in which these topics received less attention than in the West. While the detailed situations vary from country to country among the EU candidate accession states, many of the underlying problems related to land recovery are common to all of them, and there is therefore great opportunity for mutual benefit by a meaningful exchange of information on problems, and methodologies to tackle them. The means of prioritising, monitoring and the remediation technologies are key issues in such an information network; however, without effective financing solutions, it seems very unlikely that these countries will be able to tackle their problems with contaminated land in an efficient and "sustainable" manner. The paper discusses the present situation in the first group of EU accession countries, describing the situation in the various countries and outlining the conclusions and recommendations of the workshop.