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Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance

How to Challenge Insufficient EU Climate Action Before the European Court of Justice? Joint Creative Thinking on Overcoming the Well-known Obstacles

The climate emergency is unfolding. Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are severely insufficient to hold global warming below the 1.5°C temperature limit. This is the case globally, but also within the European Union and its Member States. Civil society actors and citizens increasingly resort to strategic climate litigation in the attempt to address these public institutional failures.
Date
13 December 2024
Time
09:00 -17:30

The EU has extensive competence to mitigate the climate crisis. It has adopted a wide array of climate laws, setting targets, establishing expert bodies, implementing its political objectives, and obliging Member States to take climate action. However, despite the EU’s climate activities, most cases of strategic climate litigation in Europe have been brought to national courts, challenging national climate targets and policies. This is the case – among other things – because bringing (strategic climate) litigation to the EU courts is very difficult: procedurally, very restrictive standing requirements limit the possibilities for direct actions against general acts. Preliminary requests are procedurally depending on the national judge and cannot offer a novel engagement with the facts. Actions for failure to act require a positive obligation of the EU institutions to succeed. Substantively, the EU courts have also shown great deference towards the EU institutions when it comes to reviewing decisions relating to technical and scientific information.

At the same time, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) routinely refers not only to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (EUCFR), but also to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Strasbourg Court’s case law. This raises the question of whether the recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) – above all, in KlimaSeniorinnen – may themselves create opportunities to make the ECJ change its established positions? And, if so, how?

This workshop brings together academics and practitioners to identify and creatively think about legal opportunity structures in EU law. We take the above-mentioned well-known obstacles as a starting point and open a conversation about what may work under EU law and before the ECJ. The panels are structured around four procedural avenues to the court, which all can be used for bringing very different claims and construing very different cases. The objective is to identify and creatively think about new opportunity structures to bring cases to Luxembourg that could lead to more effective climate policies in Europe.

Please register here to join us at the Amsterdam Law School (please note there is no option to join the workshop online)

Programme

09:00 – 09:15  Introduction, Christina Eckes, UvA

09:15 – 09:45   Overview of climate cases before the CJEU, Nina Koistinen, University Eastern Finland

09:45 – 10:00   coffee break

10:00 – 11:30    Panel 1: Legislative Acts                                                              In this panel, we discuss direct actions, requests for internal review (RIRs), and preliminary (validity) references as alternative routes to challenge legislative acts.

Alberto Nicotina (UvA, chair), Ana Bobic (Hertie School of Governance), Loes van Dijk (Climate Court), Stefano Romoli (Legal Service, EC), Sebastian Bechtel (ClientEarth) and Gaia Lisi (Climate Litigation Network)

11:30 – 11:45 coffee break

11:45 – 13:15     Panel 2: Non-Legislative Acts                                                     In this panel, we discuss direct actions, requests for internal review (RIRs), and preliminary (validity) references as alternative routes to challenge non-legislative acts.

Christina Eckes (chair), Daniel Sarmiento (Universidad Complutense of Madrid), Sebastian Bechtel (ClientEarth), Femke Sleegers and Berber Brouwer (Reclame Fossielvrij).

13:15 – 14:00 lunch break

14:00 – 15:30 Panel 3: Actions for failure to act and Damages                     In this panel, we discuss different avenues and strategies to challenge an omission/failure to act (adequately) and remedy harm/seek damages.

Piet Eeckhout (UCL, chair), Clara Mathis (Lille University), Mar Campins Eritja (Barcelona University), Nathan Cambien (Antwerp University)

15:30 – 15:45    coffee break

15:45-17:15 Panel 4: Challenging National Actions Before the ECJ                In this panel, we discuss different opportunities arising from relying on national courts to make references to the ECJ that help to advance a climate agenda in the national context.

Joana Setzer (LSE, chair), Clemens Kaupa (VU), Annalisa Savaresi (University of Eastern Finland), Femke Sleegers and Berber Brouwer (Reclame Fossielvrij) and Gaia Lisi (Climate Litigation Network)

17:15-17:30  Closing remarks. Christina Eckes, Alberto Nicòtina

This event is organised with the support of the RED-SPINEL Project and the Strategic Climate Litigation project.