Bogojević, Sanja --- "EU human rights law and environmental protection: the beginning of a beautiful friendship?" [2017] ELECD 985; in Douglas-Scott, Sionaidh; Hatzis, Nicholas (eds), "Research Handbook on EU Law and Human Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 451

Book Title: Research Handbook on EU Law and Human Rights

Editor(s): Douglas-Scott, Sionaidh; Hatzis, Nicholas

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781782546399

Section: Chapter 21

Section Title: EU human rights law and environmental protection: the beginning of a beautiful friendship?

Author(s): Bogojević, Sanja

Number of pages: 17

Abstract/Description:

A sharp increase in the number of jurisdictions constitutionalising environmental rights has led to the assumption of a surfacing environmental rights revolution. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Charter) codifies a ‘high level of environmental protection’ and ‘improvement of the quality of the environment’ as part of the EU’s corpus of fundamental rights protection, and as such, hints at the possibility of the EU following a similar constitutionalising trend. I investigate this possibility here by examining the type of legal duties embedded in the Charter’s environmental provisions, and their prospect of securing individual rights for the safeguard of the environment. Considering environmental protection through a EU human rights perspective stands in sharp contrast to the initial debates and objectives underpinning the creation of a common market, now the EU project. The original treaties establishing the EU legal order contained neither environmental stipulations nor any reference to human rights, as these issues were not considered pressing concerns in the creation of an economic treaty. Environmental protection instead evolved from the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and the EU’s broad use of regulatory competence to create and maintain a common market to legislate also on environmental matters. Over the course of Treaty amendments, the EU has developed considerable competences in the field of environmental law.