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Improving Environmental Liability in the EU

Summary

This report evaluates the effectiveness of the Environmental Liability Directive (ELD) and calls for its revision to ensure better protection of biodiversity, water, land, and human health through stricter liability and mandatory financial guarantees.
10 26.10.2017
Other
environment
administrative law
public administration

Key points

  • The implementation of environmental liability rules is currently inconsistent and varies significantly between different EU Member States.
  • There is significant uncertainty regarding the threshold used to determine what constitutes 'significant' environmental damage.
  • Many high-risk activities are not currently subject to strict liability, leaving gaps in the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems.
  • Current rules fail to adequately address situations where a polluting company becomes insolvent or cannot be identified, often leaving taxpayers to pay for cleanup.
Documents (PDFs)
REPORT on the application of Directive 2004/35/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 April 2004 on environmental liability with regard to the prevention and remedying of environmental damage (the ‘ELD’) Implementation of the Environmental Liability Directive
These raw data are provided by the Open Data Portal of the European Union (data.europa.eu) and are licensed under ODC-BY 1.0.