The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive and the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive provide that citizens have the right to challenge decisions concerning the impact of industrial pollution, and the potential impact that projects may have on the environment. It is expressly specified that such challenges “must not be prohibitively expensive.”
The UK has transposed these directives however, according to the Commission, they have not been fully transposed and properly applied. The Commission believes that the legal challenges in the UK are too costly and entail, therefore, a financial obstacle.
In October 2007, the European Commission issued a “letter of formal notice” warning about this issue. The Commission considers that the reviews on the procedures undertaken by the government have changed nothing. Consequently, on 18 March it has issued a final warning to the UK about “prohibitively expensive challenges to the legality of decisions on the environment.” The European Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik has urged the UK to make the challenges of the decisions affecting the environment “affordable.” If the UK fails to comply with this final warning it could be brought before the European Court of Justice. This should be a matter for each Member State to decide but the ECJ is set to rule on the costs of legal challenges.
