Online seminar: "The role of cities and regions in the implementation and enforcement of environmental legislation."

14th December 2020 - 10am to 12pm Brussels time (9am to 11am UK time)

The role that cities and regions can play in the implementation and enforcement of environmental legislation and in bringing litigation has increased recently including before the Court of Justice of the EU. This is very welcome since access to justice in environmental matters before the CJEU is still limited for citizens and NGOs.

Watch replay

This seminar will give us the chance to give an overview of the current situation on access to the Court of Justice of the European Union, and highlight the new developments in relation to the revision of the Aarhus Regulation. It proposes to come back to the judgment of the CJEU of 13 December 2019, which paved the way for European cities to become the new champions for environmental protection through environmental litigation. Indeed, by granting standing to Brussels, Madrid and Paris, this judgement recognized for the first time that cities have standing to challenge EU acts that prevent them from exercising their regulatory powers. To reflect on this new opportunity, we will also try to broaden our scope of understanding to the environmental litigation led by cities outside the borders of the EU.

The timing of this seminar will also allow us to extend our thoughts to the role of the Regions in protecting the environment. It gives us the opportunity to analyse the very fresh judgment of the CJEU of 3 December 2020 on the case brought by Brussels Region against the European Commission concerning the renewal of the authorisation of glyphosate.

Finally, we will look at the more general role played by cities around the adoption of initiatives and legislation under the Green Deal.

To do so, this seminar proposes to bring together the following three speakers:

• Antoine Bailleux, professor at Saint-Louis Bruxelles University, and member of the Brussels bar.
• Georgina Short, Senior Business Manager for the C40 Cities network.
• Anne Friel, Senior Lawyer Environmental Democracy, ClientEarth.

Moderator: Anais Berthier, Head of EU Affairs at ClientEarth, and leader of the European project “Access to justice for a greener Europe”.

***

This seminar is part of the "Access to justice for a greener Europe" project funded by the LIFE program of the European Commission and conducted by ClientEarth and Justice&Environment in eight European countries.

Our seminars aim to bring together legal practitioners in order to assess the situation in terms of access to justice in environmental matters, and consider the needs and possible avenues for improvement. These seminars are intended to create synergies between the different actors in order to find concrete solutions to overcome the obstacles that prevent citizens and NGOs from exercising their right to challenge decisions that infringe environmental law.