Environment bottleneck

Separately, a housing development project has been authorised in Lloseta.
In defense of the environment, however, the Commission has said that it won't support systemic searches for oil in waters surrounding the Balearic Islands because of the damage it would inflict on marine life.

Other projects which the Commission is scrutinising include the route of gas pipelines which will be running across Majorca from the terminal at Son Reus to Inca, Alcudia, and Andratx, and a luxury hotel in the area of s'Estanyol de Puntiró in Palma. “In fact”, said Environment Chief José Carlos Caballero yesterday, “since last August the Commission has been hard pressed to resolve more than 300 cases which had been accumulating since the middle of the 1990s.” He said that the aim of his team was to work their way through the backlog by the end of the year which means that they have got to investigate 539 outstanding applications, the subjects of which vary greatly.

Even if small scale or large scale projects are to undergo modification, official authorisation from the Commission is required if there is to be major public investment, Caballero said. “We want to simplify the applications,” he added “through using common sense legislation, because as the bureaucracy stands at the moment, the Commission has become a pitfall which blocks many projects.” He said that the key will be keeping the response to applications within an established time frame so as not to let a backlog build up.