Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (ELD 18a)
IMPLEMENTATION OF
THE ENVIRONMENTAL
LIABILITY DIRECTIVE
I am writing following my evidence to the Committee
on the implementation of the Environmental Liability Directive
(ELD) on 13 June. The Committee requested a written response to
a question on access to justice; Article 13 of the ELD. It was
asked whether Article 13 was drafted for Member States who do
not have as well developed a legal procedure for redressing challenges,
as the UK has through the Judicial Review process, or if any Member
State has expressly said they cannot challenge in court.
It is not possible to obtain his information
without extensive inquiries. We have however established that
the text in Article 13 is largely as originally drafted by the
Commission. Arguably, because Article 13 was merely expressing
the requirements of the Aarhus Convention, no Member State should
have a problem with it. We believe there were discussions to ensure
it did not require going beyond Aarhus. It was perhaps the slightly
novel aspects of the remedies under the ELD that made the Commission
want third party rights explicitly set out in the Directive.
The Committee may be interested to know that
in a recent survey my officials conducted on Member States' proposed
approach or decision on discretions and other key provisions of
the Directive, 6 Member States (11 responses were received) said
they were not proposing to adopt the discretion in Article 12(5).
This is a discretion allowing Member States to decide whether
or not to apply the request for action to cases of imminent threat
of damage.
Ian Pearson MP
22 June 2007
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