Opatija, Croatia
Hotel Ambasador, October 8-10, 2025.


CONFERENCE 2025


Impact Assessment and EU Taxonomy:
“From Policy to
Practice”

About the Conference

On behalf of the Croatian Association of Experts in Nature and Environmental Protection (HUSZPO) we are proud to invite you to the Conference „EU Taxonomy and Impact Assessment: From Policy to Practice “which will be held in Opatiji, Croatia, at Hotel Ambasador, from the 8th to the 10th of October 2025. godine.

All five previous regional conferences (2013, 2015,2017, 2019, 2022) on environmental impact assessment were extremely successful. Building on astrong foundation of success, the 2025 Conference in Opatija will continue the legacy of five highly successful regional conferences on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) held from 2013 to 2022.These past events consistently attracted over 300 attendees, including professionals, scientists, and government officials from Croatia and beyond,featuring over 100 professional papers and insightful round table discussions.

Each conference featured over 100 professional papers and several round tables on various topics.More than 300 professionals, scientists, government representatives, local and regional government representatives, NGOs, public relations experts, media representatives, and investors from Croatia, the region, and beyond attended each conference. Tofurther enhance the quality and reach of the conference by involving experts from across Europe,in 2022, we expanded the scope to a European level, aligning with the European Green Deal.

Following the successful Symposium on Linkages Between Sustainable Finance andEnvironmental Procedures, held on October 3-4, 2024, in Dubrovnik, we are proud toannounce the Conference in Opatija, which will further explore key topics and focus on implementing the conclusions from Dubrovnik.

🔍 Key Takeaways from the DubrovnikSymposium:
✔️ Better interoperability between the EUTaxonomy and Environmental ImpactAssessments (EIA/SEA) is needed to ensure anintegrated approach to sustainable finance
✔️ EIA processes should recognize the positivecontributions of projects, not just potentialnegative impacts
✔️ Aligning the EU Taxonomy’s minimumsocial safeguards with the standards ofinternational financial institutions is crucial
✔️ Financial institutions and private sectorstakeholders must play a more active role inadapting to sustainable finance regulationsOpatijaOctober

We hereby invite you to join the conference that became the platform for arranging cooperation and exchanging experiences with experts from different countries.

Previous conferences

The idea is that the Conference brings together EIA practitioners, scientists, public authority representatives, non-governmental organizations, public relations experts, investors form Croatia, the region and beyond, who are involved in environmental impact assessment procedures and are willing to share their knowledge and experiences in a democratic environment.

Since often in practice a discord between the stakeholders in environmental impact assessment procedures can be noted, which leads to delays in the procedure and investment realization, one of the main Conference goals is to improve communication and increase trust between the stakeholders, all the while respecting expert knowledge and best practice.

We are proud that all of our conferences were „carbon neutral“, namely all of the greenhouse gas emission of the event were compensated. By investing in greenhouse gas reduction units created through renewable energy resources projects and re-forestation, emissions of participant transport and lodging, conference logistics and venue have been neutralized.