Inspection priorities for facilities classified for environmental protection in 2023

Each year, an instruction from the French Ministry of Ecological Transition defines the national actions of the inspection of facilities classified for environmental protection (ICPE).

For the year 2023, it is therefore the instruction of December 12, 2022, published on December 30, 2022, which has defined the priorities for ICPE inspections.

Firstly, "sustainable" actions:

• Policing of classified facilities (inspection visits, review of authorization applications, examination of studies submitted by the operator, examination of applications for cessation of activity, combating illegal activities, particularly waste management, etc.);
• Other policing missions, within and outside classified facilities (enforcement of mining and post-mining regulations; control of hazardous equipment and products, inspections relating to enforcement of the anti-waste law, hazardous pipelines, etc.);
• Integration of technological and health risks (PPRT, management of polluted sites and soils, information for operators and stakeholders on regulations and the state of the environment, etc.).

Secondly, priority thematic actions:

• Drought management: drafting of supplementary prefectoral decrees, verification of compliance with drought regulations.
• Checking the provisions of ministerial decrees on general requirements for monitoring gas leaks in and around methane plants.
• Control of atmospheric emissions from installations subject to authorisation: methods of channelling/capturing effluents, relevance and representativeness of measurements, compliance of measurements with standards

In addition to these priorities for the inspection of ICPEs, this instruction also sets out thematic guidelines for inspection visits:

• On the one hand, systematic actions :

1. Post-Lubrizol approach: implementation of regulatory changes for activities involving the storage of flammable liquids in mobile containers and/or overhead tanks (authorization and declaration regime) and installations for the storage of combustible materials in covered warehouses under heading 1510 (authorization and registration regime).
2. Inspection actions at sites subject to the Industrial Emissions Directive(IED), including steps to regularize installations benefiting from acquired rights, via the publication of additional prefectoral decrees to comply with European rules.

• On the other hand, a choice of actions (by region):

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