Environmental NGOs and Access to Justice before the CJEU

Mario Pagano

• Publisher: Hart Publishing
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781509980024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Environmental Law
• Index: Law

This book tells a fascinating legal mobilisation story. Analysing EU environmental litigation over the last 30 years, it illustrates how the European environmental movement has patiently attempted and succeeded in expanding access to justice opportunities before the EU Courts.

This is despite the longstanding reluctance of the EU Court of Justice to soften its standing requirements for private applicants bringing cases directly to Luxembourg. This research draws on both doctrinal analysis and qualitative methods of socio-legal inquiry. At its heart are interviews with key stakeholders: environmental lawyers, plaintiffs, and activists, which give an invaluable and innovative perspective on strategic litigation before the EU judiciary.

With the growing emergency posed by the climate crisis and resultant increased litigation, this book makes a significant scholarly contribution to the study of environmental movements, to our conceptualisation of legal mobilisation, and to our understanding of the impact of litigation in European environmental law.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Acronyms
• Introduction
• 1 . The Plaumann Test
• 2 . Circumventing Plaumann via National Courts
• 3 . Shaping the Aarhus Convention
• 4 . Using the Aarhus Convention against Plaumann
• 5 . The New Aarhus Regulation
• 6 . Plaumann and Climate Change before Non-EU Courts
• 7 . Plaumann and Climate Change before the Court of Justice of the European Union
• Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index