A broad coalition of European and Central Asian NGOs issued a strongly-worded statement yesterday afternoon at the close of the high-level segment of the Meeting of the Parties to the Aarhus Convention – an international agreement on the rights of the public to information, participation and justice in relation to environmental issues.
The EEB, Europe’s largest network of environmental organisations with 140 members in over 30 countries, was present at the Meeting of the Parties as part of the ‘European ECO Forum’ coalition of NGOs.
EEB Secretary General Jeremy Wates delivered the critical statement to several hundred delegates following an almost decade-long process that resulted earlier this year in the Aarhus Convention’s Compliance Committee, an independent and highly respected compliance review body, finding the EU to be in breach of the requirements of the Convention.
While all previous Compliance Committee findings against other countries have been endorsed by the Convention’s governing body, the Meeting of the Parties, with the full support of the EU, the bloc refused to agree to Meeting endorsing the ruling that it was at fault, proposing instead that the Meeting should only ‘take note’ of the finding – a stance that was described in the NGO statement as palpably hypocritical and as “showing a worrying lack of respect for the rule of law”.
Jeremy Wates, the EEB Secretary General, said:
“As European citizens who care deeply about the democratic values of the EU, we can only feel a sense of shame that the EU has gone into an international forum with a position that threatened to undermine democracy and accountability in a range of countries extending throughout the wider Europe and Central Asia. And the primary reason for this is the European Commission’s stubborn resistance to having its decisions on environmental matters challengeable before the EU courts in the way that the decisions of national authorities may be challenged at national level.
“It has been a week of humiliation for the EU. Not a single other government or stakeholder supported its position – fortunately. The EU and especially the European Commission should now learn their lesson from this sorry affair and immediately start to work on revising the relevant EU legislation to bring it into line with international law.”
As no other Parties supported the EU position, the resulting stand-off led to the matter being postponed to the next session of the Meeting of the Parties in four years’ time. While the EEB regrets this delay and the poor precedent it creates, the adoption of the EU position would have been far worse for the Convention and for democracy.
