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New EU environmental law book published

20 January 2014

A new book on EU environmental law, co-edited by Richard Macrory director of the Centre for Law and the Environment, has just been published by Europa Law Publishing.  Over a number of years the Court of Justice of the European Union has developed various doctrines (sympathetic interpretation, direct effect, etc.)  which allow national courts to apply EU law where Member States have failed to transpose correctly.

As Lord Carnwath of the UK Supreme Court notes in his Foreword, National Courts and EU Environmental Law ‘for the first time provides a systematic and comparative analsyis of how national courts handle these principles in the cases before them. The book includes thirteen case-studies plus cross-cutting analytical chapters.

National Courts and EU Environmental Law  emerged from work of the Avosetta Group, a small informal group of lawyers whose main purpose is to further the development of environmental law in the European Union and Member States.  Avosetta is the Latin name of a rare bird which caused the European Court of Justice to establish far reaching principles of European nature protection law in the German dykes case (Commission v Germany [1991] ECR I-882)

The editors presented the first copy to the host of the Helsinki meeting of the Avosetta group, prof. Ari Ekroos, on 31 May 2013. From left to right: prof. Moreno-Molina, prof. Macrory, prof. Ekroos and prof. Jans.