(08/01/04) EU-bevolking zal milieuwetten voor rechtbank afdwingbaar kunnen maken

• 2004-01-09

EU citizens will finally be empowered to enforce environmental laws

Speaking today after a public hearing in the European Parliament on access to justice on environmental matters, Swedish Green MEP Inger Schörling, the Parliament's Rapporteur on a proposed directive on this issue, said:

"We badly need a directive on access to justice to enforce environmental law on both a national and European level. The Aarhus convention made clear that the environment was owned by citizens – not by industry or government. With the proposed European Commission directive EU citizens and associations would get the right to access justice to defend the environment whenever it was appropriate. The Commission eventually came up with this proposal – which intends to remove the gaps in the environmental legislation contained in the Aarhus convention – in October 2003."

"The Aarhus convention proposed three pillars: access to environmental information, public participation in environmental decision-making, and access to justice. Having already adopted directives on the first two pillars, the Commission has dragged its feet on implementing the third."

"The proposal now on the table may not go far enough in some points, but is a good basis for discussion in the Parliament's Environmental Committee on 27 January. The Greens will ensure that this directive will lower the barriers for access to justice – not introduce new restrictions. This directive is a long-standing objective of all environmental movements and organisations in Europe and we hope to get it into the law books as soon as possible."

Among the invited environmental law experts speaking at the hearing were Ludwig Kraemer (DG ENVI, European Commission), Jonas Ebbesson (Professor of environmental law, University of Stockholm), Ralf Hallo (Stichting Natuur en Milieu NGO, Netherlands), Miriam Dross (Institute for Applied Ecology, Germany) and Ulf Öberg (Researcher, University of Stockholm)

Note to editors: The UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters was adopted in 1998 in the Danish city of Århus. This Convention establishes a number of rights of the public with regard to the environment. It provides for the right of everyone to receive environmental information that is held by public authorities; the right to participate from an early stage in environmental decision-making; and the right to challenge, in a court of law, public decisions that have been made without respecting the two aforementioned rights or environmental law in general.