(Rinnovabili.it) – Preliminary approval obtained for the new single environmental authorisation (Italian initials AUA) for small and medium enterprises. The Council of Ministers this morning approved the presidential decree governing the unification and simplification of the administrative procedures to be complied with as regards the environment for businesses and for systems not subject to integrated environmental authorisation. This one decree will thus cover up to seven different procedures, such as the authorisation to discharge industrial waste water or emissions into the atmosphere, and the Regions will have the power to extend this number further. For the Government, the AUA “considerably simplifies the administrative procedures to be complied with, especially for small and medium enterprises, because the current environmental regulations compel enterprises to contact a number of different administrations in order to obtain the environmental authorisations required to produce their products,” each of which is valid for a different period of time. The total cost per year for small and medium enterprises to obtain the most important environmental authorisations now replaced by the AUA has been estimated at over € 1.3 billion”. The regulation is now pending the opinion of the Joint Conference, the Council of State and the competent parliamentary commissions.