Richard Macrory

‘Gold Plating’ of European Environmental Measures?

Minimum harmonization in European environmental law essentially means that the Member States have the power to lay down more stringent standards in this area of regulation than those laid down by European legislation. However, there are indications which seem to suggest that Member States make very little use of their powers to lay down or maintain more stringent national standards. The general question to be dealt with in this paper is whether Member States actually use their power to lay down or maintain more stringent environmental standards after European harmonization. Based upon the papers and discussion at the meeting of the Avosetta Group of European Environmental Lawyers in Monção (Portugal), 6 and 7th February 2009, this paper aims to paint an impressionist picture of the contemporary practice of gold plating (or not) in the Member States.

The Role of the First Tier Environment Tribunal

1. In 2010, with remarkably little fanfare or publicity, a new tribunal with the rather ungainly title of the First Tier Tribunal (Environment) was established within the General Regulatory Chamber. The fact that the new tribunal has yet to decide a case in part explains its current low profile, but the low key nature of the launch of Britain’s first specialised environmental judicial body still remains surprising given that this has to be set against almost 20 years worth of discussion and reports on the subject. Over this period, many different models have been proposed but few would have predicted the outcome that finally emerged. The background is important in that it helps to explain the position we have reached today, and is likely to shape the expectations of the role and influence of the tribunal in the future. The history can be divided into three distinct phases, as follows.1

Public Consultation and GMO Policy—A Very British Experiment

This article describes the UK experience with public consultation procedures in the field of environmental policy and law. It analyses the different challenges for such procedures, particularly on issues where there seems to be a conflict between scientific information on environmental or health risks and deeply held public values. As a conscious departure from established practices GM Nation tried to engage the public in a new form of debate about the risks and benefits associated with GM agriculture. The article describes how this exercise was conducted, how it actually worked out in practice and also discusses some of the criticisms raised and problems encountered.

Cross-border Environmental Governance: The EC Law Dimensions

Rapid and endemic deterioration of the global environment is undoubtedly one of the most complex issues currently facing policy makers throughout the world, not least because pollution ignores the limitations of political boundaries. Whereas the principle of state sovereignty informed international laws governing the exploitation of natural resources until the first half of the twentieth century, the past fifty years have witnessed a growing realization that activities within one state have the capacity to affect environmental quality within other states – whether adjacent or otherwise. The phenomenon of transboundary environmental pollution has forced the international community to accept not only that environmental protection is beyond the capacity of individual nation states, but also that cooperation is crucial to effective environmental governance. This political consensus has gradually stimulated the development of two broad streams of procedural norms designed to tackle the problem of transboundary environmental pollution. The first of these requires states proposing to undertake activities that might have an impact on the environmental quality of other states to notify and consult potentially affected countries of these proposals. A second but more nascent generation of procedural principles has embraced the related global consensus that effective public participation in environmental governance is fundamental to the sustainable management of national and shared natural resources (Ebbesson, 1997). In effect, where transboundary environmental impacts are concerned, states are increasingly required to consult not only the governments of affected states but also citizens within those states. Consequently, transboundary environmental cooperation is no longer within the exclusive discretion and control of government bodies. Citizens of potentially affected states are now being conferred with legal rights to participate in the process of environmental governance within the proposing state. The purpose of this essay is to examine the nature and scope of crossborder participatory rights under European Community environmental law. In particular, this essay will assess the likely significance of those rights for cross-border environmental governance on the island of Ireland. Although the development of cross-border participatory rights at