CHAPTER II

COMMON PROVISIONS ON THE PROCESS FOR TRANSMITTING INFORMATION AND ON QUALITY CONTROL

Ambient air quality portal and data repository
Article 3
1
The Commission, assisted by the European Environment Agency, shall establish a data repository and make it accessible through the ambient air quality portal (hereinafter referred to as ‘the portal’).
2
Member States shall make available the information used for reporting and reciprocal exchange of information to the data repository in accordance with Article 5.
3
The European Environment Agency shall manage the data repository.
4
The public shall have access to the data repository free of charge.
5
Each Member State shall nominate a person or persons responsible for the delivery on its behalf to the data repository of each reported and exchanged information. Only nominated persons shall make available the information to be reported or exchanged.
6
Each Member State shall communicate the name of the person or persons referred to in paragraph 5 to the Commission.

Encoding of information
Article 4
The Commission, assisted by the European Environment Agency, shall on the portal make available to Member States the standardised machine-readable description of how to encode the information required by this Decision.

Procedure for making information available
Article 5
1
Member States shall make available to the data repository the information required by this Decision in accordance with the data requirements set out in Part A of Annex I. That information shall be automatically processed by an electronic tool.
2
The tool referred to in paragraph 1 shall be used to perform the following functions:
a
a consistency check of the information which is to be made available;
b
a check of the primary data relative to the specific data quality objectives specified in Annex IV to Directive 2004/107/EC and Annex I to Directive 2008/50/EC;
c
the aggregation of primary data according to the rules set out in Annex I to this Decision and Annexes VII and XI to Directive 2008/50/EC.
3
Where aggregated data is to be made available pursuant to Articles 6 to 14, they shall be generated by the tool referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article.
4
The Commission shall acknowledge the receipt of the information.
5
In case a Member State wants to update information, it shall describe the differences between the updated and original information and the reasons for the update when making the updated information available in the data repository.
The Commission shall acknowledge the receipt of the updated information. After that acknowledgment, the updated information shall be considered as the official information.