Notices
* Due to technical reasons, this newsletter appeared much later than planned. Our apologies for this. We strive to keep up a more regular Newsletter in the New Year.
* The EEL Website offers a database of environmental case law. For easier access and study purposes, the leading cases have now been published in a book, “European Environmental Case Law”, available at Asser Press. The book contains over 500 pages and costs 25 Euro. For more information, see http://www.asserpress.nl/cata/EECL/fra.htm.
* The team presenting you this Newsletter and the EEL Website would like to wish you all a Merry X-Mas and a Happy New Year!
Added to the Case Law page:
* T-13/99, CFI 11 September 2002, Pfizer Animal Health v Council
* T-70/99, ECJ 11 september 2002, Alpharma v Council In both of cases T-13/99 and this case, the companies in question accused the Council of errors with regard to risk assessment and management, and misapplication of the precautionary principle. Also, a breach of the obligation to state reasons was brought forward,and breach of the principle of protection of legitimate expectations. All of these pleas were rejected by the Court of First Instance and the application dismissed as unfounded.
The lenghty judgments proivide very interesting legal argumantation on the above-mentioned principles. Notably, they provide judicial guidance on how EU authorities can legitimately apply the precautionary principle.
* C-241/01 National Farmers’ Union
ECJ reaffirmed EU governments’ right to question the validity of harmonising EU measures in the light of significant new scientific knowledge, while setting conditions on how this can occur.
Added to the National pages:
* updates to the Slovak page.
* updates to the Russian page.
* updates to the Czech page.
Added to the Documents page, EU Documents:
* Third Annual Survey on the Implementation and Enforcement of Community Environmental Law Main parts: 1) details of infringement actions initiated by the Commission in 2001. The developments during the year 2000 are to be found in Annex I which consists of an extract of the Chapter on environment in the Eighteenth Annual Report on Monitoring the Application of Community Law (2000). 2) IMPEL work 3) environmental Directives that demanded transposition during 2000 and 2001 + details of the national transposition measures. Annex II presents a scoreboard that details – per Member State and per sector – ongoing infringement actions as a result of non-communication, non-conformity as well as actions with regard to horizontal bad application cases.
Added to the Links page, NGO Links:
* Update of the link to the Institute of European Environmental Policy (IEEP).
Added to the Links page, Eu Links:
* Updates of the presidencies links (Spanish Presidency for the first part of 2002 and the current Presidency of Denmark).
* European Institute of Public Administration
Added to the Reviews page:
* W.Th. Douma (ed.), European Environmental Case Law, Asser Press, 2002. See Notices above.
Added to the Conference page:
* 30-31 October 2002 “Aproximation: The Never Ending Story”, Prague. The Institute for Environmental Policy, a partner to the EEL website, has been dealing with approximation in the field of environment from the start. The conference is in celebration of its 10th anniversary.
* 15-17 November 2002, EEB seminar on 6EAP for Accession Countries’environmentalists, Brussels
* 25-26 November, 2002, Conference “Billions for sustainability? How can we do it better – lessons learned from the use of pre-accession funds, Brussels
* 28-29 November 2002, IEEP and WWF European, “Promoting the social and economic benefits of Natura 2000” Conference, Brussels
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Editors
Wybe Th. Douma (T.M.C. Asser Institute, The Hague) Jurgen Lefevere (FIELD, London) Alena Dodokova (Institute for Environmental Policy, Prague)
Technical realisation
Marco van der Harst, Julien J.M. Simon
(T.M.C. Asser Institute, The Hague)
e-mail: eelnewsservices@asser.nl