(1)

Reporting requirements play a key role in ensuring the proper monitoring and correct enforcement of Union legal acts. However, it is important to streamline such requirements in order to ensure that they fulfil the purpose for which they were intended and to limit the administrative burden.

(2)

Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (3) lays down general rules aimed at the establishment of the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) for the purposes of Union environmental policies and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment. That Directive requires Members State to update, if necessary, and publish a report including, among other things, a summary description of the costs and benefits of implementing that Directive by 31 March of each year.

(3)

Taking into account the results of the Commission report of 9 June 2017 on Actions to Streamline Environmental Reporting and the accompanying Fitness Check of Reporting and Monitoring of EU Environment Policy, Directive 2007/2/EC was amended by Regulation (EU) 2019/1010 of the European Parliament and of the Council (4) in order to reduce the scope of reporting to the governance for its implementation and the reuse of public spatial data. In its evaluation of Directive 2007/2/EC, that was concluded in 2022, the Commission found that the legal framework could be made more efficient by means of further reducing the administrative burden.

(4)

In order to reduce the administrative burden of the reporting requirements under Directive 2007/2/EC, it is necessary to align the frequency and timing of reporting on the implementation and use of Member States’ infrastructures for spatial information with more recent horizontal digital data legal acts. It is therefore appropriate to lower the frequency of reporting under Directive 2007/2/EC to once every two years.

(5)

Since the amendment to be made to Directive 2007/2/EC concerns the provision of information to the Commission by Member States, there is no obligation for Member States to transpose it. In this particular situation, it is therefore appropriate to use a decision for such an amendment.

(6)

Since the objective of this Decision, namely to streamline the reporting requirements laid down in Directive 2007/2/EC, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States but can rather, by reason of its scale and effects, be better achieved at Union level, the Union may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union. In accordance with the principle of proportionality as set out in that Article, this Decision does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve that objective.

(7)

Directive 2007/2/EC should therefore be amended accordingly,