The EU Aarhus Centre offers NGOs and citizens’ groups top-level legal advice on their rights to information, participation and justice in environmental matters. The Centre is headed by an expert on EU environmental law, Professor Ludwig Kramer.
The EU Aarhus Centre promotes full and effective implementation of the Aarhus Convention, an international convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice, throughout European Union institutions, bodies and agencies. The Centre will support the development and enforcement of these rights by providing training and advice, monitoring the practices of EU institutions, bodies and agencies and creating a space for dialogue between NGOs and the EU.
Using the law as a tool for change
ClientEarth has much valuable experience in the field of access to justice at EU and member state level.
ClientEarth has already made significant progress on access to justice with the success of its cases against the European Commission and also the UK which were taken to the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee. In March 2011, this Aarhus Committee agreed with ClientEarth’s case that the European courts must allow citizens and citizen groups to challenge decisions made by the European institutions under the Aarhus Convention. This followed the Committee’s findings in August 2010 upholding ClientEarth’s case that the UK’s excessive court fees are a barrier to environmental public interest cases. The next stage to put the principle of access to justice into practice will involve test case litigation in the European courts.
ClientEarth’s continuation of a series of cases on access to documents, the exceptional area where NGOs have the right to go to court where freedom of information requests are refused, is having an impact as the European Commission and EU agencies are taking requests more seriously and, in some cases, releasing information more promptly.
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