German law requires major projects to be assessed for their effects on a defined list of protected interests — human health, animals, plants, soil, water, air, climate, landscape, cultural heritage — before approval.
The procedure has named stages in statute: screening, scoping to fix the range of what will be examined, the report itself, authority participation, public participation, cross-border participation where relevant, a summary presentation, a reasoned evaluation, and monitoring afterwards.
The assessment is not a separate permission. It runs inside the approval procedure, which means no German authority can decide the project without first having decided the width of the question.