The Kursiu Nerija (Curonian Spit) National Park has been entered in the UNESCO World Heritage List as a protected area carrying an exceptional value. Any construction performed without restrictions could cause great harm to the unique landscape; at the same time, elimination of construction effects could entail complex technological processes and great financial losses. For this reason, the issue of a construction permit in Kursiu Nerija has some peculiarities that should be known by every entrepreneur intending to invest in any project in Kursiu Nerija.
Since Kursiu Nerija belongs to the coastal zone of the Baltic Sea, the issue of construction permits is regulated by the general provisions of the Law on Construction of the Republic of Lithuania as well as the special provisions of the Law on the Coastal Zone of the Republic of Lithuania. The latter law establishes different procedures for the issue of a construction permit depending on who issues the construction permit.
In the case of the first procedure, a construction permit is issued by the Administration of Municipality.
Some essential cases of applying this procedure should be mentioned here: when individual residential houses registered in the Real Property Register and situated in the places of existing or former homesteads are reconstructed or new individual residential houses and their appurtenances are built; and when recreation buildings registered in the Real Property Register are reconstructed. It is emphasized that some years ago a draft law on the Coastal Zone established the same procedure for the issue of a construction permit in case of major repair of the aforementioned buildings. But since the draft law was not approved by Parliament, one may expect to face the problem of which procedure should be used for the issue of a construction permit for the latter type of construction.
Moreover, such a procedure should be followed when construction of buildings is provided for in the master plan of Neringa City or in the detailed plan of residential areas located in the residential zone of the Kursiu Nerija National Park. It should be stressed that, like other municipalities, Neringa does not have an approved master plan. Undoubtedly, such a "freeze" of a master plan is absolutely disadvantageous for entrepreneurs, since the development of activities and investments becomes difficult without one.
In case of the second procedure, a construction permit is issued by the County Governor's Administration. This procedure should be followed for construction for water management needs or harbors as well as the structures provided for in the special plan for the management of the Kursiu Nerija National Park. Since the said plan also has not been approved yet, the Kursiu Nerija National Park Planning Scheme of 1994 is expected to be observed.
In the case of constructing the remaining structures, i.e., those that fall outside of the coverage of the mentioned procedures, the construction permit procedure is more complicated. This procedure should be followed for new recreational buildings whose construction has not been included in the solutions of the special plan. A distinctive feature of this procedure is that the Government of the Republic of Lithuania must approve the design proposals before the County Governor's Administration issues a construction permit. The procedure to get approval from the Government involves not only interested organisations and institutions performing supervision of various types of activities, but also the Ministry of Environment, which makes the decision of whether or not to forward the documents to the government.
Thus, the first two procedures for the issue of a construction permit discussed above are simpler because it is not necessary to get an approval from the Government of the Republic of Lithuania in the process of issuing a construction permit. In other words, in these cases a construction permit is issued in the general manner prescribed by the Law on Construction of the Republic of Lithuania. Meanwhile, the third procedure (in which government approval is needed) is time-consuming, costly and demands much documentation.
In the latter case, in order to be able to assess possible risks and make a decision to start implementing the project or not, the entrepreneur is discouraged not only by the complexity of the process of getting approval from the government itself, but also by the fact that the issuance of a construction permit when approval is obtained has not been regulated precisely. In any case, the procedure applied in a given case depends on the type of structures involved and whether construction of those structures has been provided for in the solutions of the aforementioned territorial planning documents.
Vaiva Vaiciulyte is a lawyer at Jurevicius, Balciunas & Bartkus, a member of Baltic Legal Solutions, a pan-Baltic integrated legal network of law firms including Glikman & Partnerid in Estonia and Kronbergs & Cukste in Latvia, dedicated to providing a quality "one-stop shop" approach to clients' needs in the Baltics.
