The EEB’s Provisional Analysis of the Performance of the EU on Access to Justice

The European Green Deal has been an ambitious environmental and climate policy package in both substantive and procedural aspects. It provided an unprecedented opportunity to implement access to justice in environmental matters and established by the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention) in sectoral legislation, since a horizontal Directive implementing this right in the EU is missing and the right to access national courts in environmental matters is poorly implemented and highly fragmented across the EU. This provisional assessment compares and evaluates the legal wording of the different access to justice provisions proposed by the European Commission in all European Green Deal files which contained such provisions, in the legislature of 2019 to 2024.