Natura 2000 and protected-area pre-screening before the appropriate assessment
Article 6(3) of the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) requires that any plan or project likely to have a significant effect on a Natura 2000 site, alone or in combination with others, undergoes an appropriate assessment of its implications for the site's conservation objectives. The first step is a screening: is a Natura 2000 site, or another protected area, close enough to be affected? ERWAY Legality Assessment pre-screens a site polygon against international protected-area records and designations and reports what it finds — and is explicit about what it cannot find.
Natura 2000 sites are recorded in the international protected-area records the product reads where a record references the network, as an international designation: such a finding is tier 4 with 'Verification needed', which is the right outcome for a designation whose conservation objectives the record does not carry. The product has no separate Natura 2000 layer, and the official register — the Natura 2000 viewer and the standard data form — is the authority for the appropriate assessment. What the pre-screen adds is everything around that: national parks and reserves with their protection class, water-protection zones, protected wetlands by official boundary, heritage sites, Indigenous and community lands. The EIA screening page sets this inside the Annex III criteria; the EU Taxonomy DNSH page inside the Taxonomy's appropriate-assessment criterion.
What the pre-screen finds
Per site polygon: overlap with a protected area in hectares and as a share, with the category and class; international designations referenced in the records, at tier 4; relation to a protected wetland by official boundary or disc, with the near and far bands named as defaults; relation to a heritage site with the footprint's confidence; tenure status where the site lies on community land. One outcome per site and the source that decided it.
What it does not find
The site's conservation objectives, its qualifying habitats and species, and whether an effect is likely to be significant. Those come from the standard data form and from the appropriate assessment itself. The product also does not read national or regional registers of protected areas, so a designation recorded only there is not a finding here — and this is stated wherever it applies.
Where it fits
Before the screening request: to know which of several candidate sites is nowhere near a designation, and which will need the assessment. The output is a dated record per site with the findings, the map and the geometry, which the ecologist who prepares the appropriate assessment starts from. The wind and solar page shows the same pre-screen under RED III's acceleration-area rules.