Ecologic Legal

The transition to a sustainable development is a strategic aim of the EU. To this end, the European Council adopted during the meeting in Gothenburg 2001 a European Sustainable Development Strategy. The mid-term review of the strategy is scheduled for next year (2005). How has the European Sustainable Development Strategy performed so far? In this article, Ecologic analyses both the relation between the Sustainable Development Strategy and the Lisbon process as well as the weaknesses of the strategy, and suggests a way forward. Read more

The EC increasingly participates in multilateral environmental agreements alongside its Member States. The appearance of both EC and Member States raises questions of competences for the negotiation, conclusion and implementation of such international instruments. In particular in the field of marine environment, substantial progress is hindered by an opaque division of competences between the EC and its Member States and lack of coordination. Accordingly, the German Federal Environmental Agency commissioned Ecologic and Professor Astrid Epiney with the task of analysing the division of external competences between the EC and its Member States taking into account the OSPAR-Convention. The results of this project have now been published as a book.Read more

In the ZUR - Zeitschrift für Umweltrecht, Peter Beyer analyses the new European Directive on environmental liability. The liability for damages caused to the environment by emissions as well as accidents in the field of industrial productions and transportation of dangerous goods belongs to the issues which have been controversially discussed in politics for years, regularly brought up by spectacular accidents as in Baia Mare or the sinking of the Prestige off the Spanish coast.Read more