The UN Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee has issued draft rulings which find that the UK courts are prohibitively expensive for citizens to take environmental cases. This means that the UK is in breach of the Aarhus Convention, which it ratified in 2005. Article 9(4) of the Aarhus Convention requires that access to environmental justice is not prohibitively expensive.
Although Ireland has not ratified the Aarhus Convention, this same requirement is implemented through EU law by EU Directive 85/337. This Directive obliges member states to provide procedures for access to environmental justice which are "not prohibitively expensive". As the PILA Bulletin previously reported, last year the ECJ clarified that for member states to satisfy this requirement, the existence of a judicial discretionary power to depart from the usual "costs follow the event rule" did not suffice, see Commission -v- Ireland C-427/07. Please click here to view the bulletin article.
For a press release by environmental law firm Client Earth, who acted in the case, please click here. For a press release by the Environmental Law Foundation, please click here.
For an article by the Guardian newspaper, please click here.