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1. Assessment and interpretation of information regarding the environment and its components; environmental economics.

2. Conditions for aggregated and statistical information about the environment, sectors and socio-economic aspects of sustainable development; smooth exchange of information; a central reporting office; streamlined reporting.

3. Support for IPPC, BAT, EIA, EPER/ePRTR and waste management.

4. A concentrated base of information and knowledge about polluters (IPPC, IRZ, EIA, connection with waste, air, emissions, subventions, fines, cases; all in a social, employment and growth context).

5. Voluntary tools, EEA (Environmental Education and Awareness), MA21 (Local Agenda 21) and publishing information as the main channel of communication with citizens, businesses and foreign countries.

6. External projects for the enhancement and development of the aforementioned activities.

History

One of the early forerunners of the Czech Environmental Information Agency (CENIA) may very well have been the Computational and Experimental Laboratory (CEL), which was transformed into the Rationalisation and Experimental Laboratory (REL) in the early 1970s. REL operated a mainframe computer and specialised in programming and the selling of machine time.

Shortly after the establishment of the Ministry of the Environment in January 1990, REL formed the basis for the foundation of the Environmental Information Centre (EIC), which was assigned the task of building up an Integrated Environmental Information System in the Czech Republic. Its activities included the publication of the Environmental Yearbook, which has been extended to a bilingual Czech and English Statistical Environmental Yearbook of the Czech Republic since 1996.

As of April 1, 1992, EIC was transformed into the Czech Environmental Institute (CEI) with the same mission, i.e. to create an integrated environmental information system. In addition to that, a number of other tasks were added: environmental education, voluntary instruments in environmental protection, the economics of the environment, evaluation of environmental impacts, environmental risks etc. CEI prepared the base documents and data for the State Environmental Policy and was one of the first institutions in the Czech Republic to have introduced e-mail (the first e-mails were sent in 1994) and the Internet.

The establishment of the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Agency and of the Integrated Pollution Register (IPR) was a significant expansion of the scope of CEI’s activities. The aforementioned institutions were set up pursuant to Act No. 76/2002 Coll., on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control.

As of April 1, 2005, based on a decision of the Minister of the Environment CEI was transformed into CENIA, Czech Environmental Information Agency, which operates as a state-subsidised organisation under the Ministry of the Environment. Its dandelion-shaped logo well illustrates the primary mission of the Agency: To be the centre of information which has a solid basis, but spreads readily. The main focus of CENIA is to provide information concerning the environment, so that all Czech nationals are granted access to such information in accordance with Act No. 123/1998 Coll., on the Right to Environmental Information.

CENIA wants to be the Czech News Agency (ÈTK) of the environment.