THE EUROPEAN UNION AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEMOCRACY: THE AARHUS CONVENTION IN EU LAW

Abstract

As a result of the pressing global environmental protection concerns, the political and legal discourse in the international community has been increasingly involved with the notions of ‘environmental democracy’ and ‘environmental justice’. As both a regional and global actor in the sphere of environmental protection, the European Union (EU) has been up to par with these developments, having established its own regulatory framework in the field of environmental (procedural) democracy, primarily governed by the standards and principles set out under the 1998 Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, which the EU ratified in 2005. This paper explores the transposition of the Aarhus Convention rules to the EU plane, examining the modalities in which such transposition has occurred as well as the legal nature of and the legal repercussions stemming from this transposition which – at the present moment – still remains far from complete. The discussion that follows looks in turn at the three foundational pillars of the Aarhus Convention (access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters), inquiring into the corresponding expression that the obligations foreseen under each of these pillars have found within the Union legal framework.