Europos aplinkos agentūra. Teisinis reglamentavimas

This current Master Thesis aims at revealing the activity’s system and functions of the European Environment Agency in the context of regulations and in-house documents of the organization. The following methods were applied in order to achieve that aim: a) analysis of historic data; b) analysis of documents; c) case analysis. As environmental protection has become one of the aims of the European Community, it seeks to solve environmental problems integrally, i.e. together with economic, social and political issues. While establishing environmental protection policy of wide spectrum, implementing, observing and evaluating it both at European and at national levels, it is necessary to appeal to trustworthy, objective, high quality information. To achieve this purpose, European Environment Agency was established, which is granted with the exclusive right in the European Community to provide people, who participate in the establishment, enactment, implementation and evaluation of environmental policy, and the general public with trustworthy and independent information about environment’s state and its protection. As in Lithuania comprehensive analysis of structure, activity and legal regulation of this Agency has not been performed, this current Master Thesis provides the analysis of factors that has influenced the establishment of the European Environment Agency. Moreover, the analysis emphasizes the functions of the Agency, which highlight the nature of the whole activity of the organization the best, analyzes in-house structural elements of the organization and their interconnection. European Environment Agency is the first institution in the European Union which has opened its door to the new member states even prior to their entry into the European Union. In order to reveal the status and activity of such countries in the Agency, case analysis has been carried out. The case analysis exposes the example of one country, in this case of Lithuania, of its collaboration with the European Environment Agency on the basis of an agreement (the status of Lithuania, its obligations and benefit that had been received while collaborating with the Agency prior to the entry into the European Union) and example of collaboration after Lithuania joined the European Union.