Description

Handbook of European Environmental Law

This handbook proposes an introduction to the EU's Environmental Law and it is thus primarily intended for students, legal practitioners and environment-specialized engineers and other technicians.

European environmental taw remains strongly under the influence of its initial market-oriented legal framework in spite of the progress accomplished by the common environmental policy. Environmental governance and management operate within a complex primary law framework, within which conciliation must be made between economical and environmental objectives around such concepts as the quest for a high level of protection and sustainable development.

A description of that decisive institutional framework provides the starting point for a synthetic and dynamic presentation of the hundreds of secondary law measures which provide parameters for human activities, from the main areas of natural environments to the objects impacting thereon, the means to implement them or economic instruments such as greenhouse gas emission allowances ou the producer's responsibility extended to the end-of-life of his products. As to the integration of environmental requirements into other policies, it resolves arising conflicts with market rules and sectorial policies, especially in the agricultural, transports, energy and health areas.

This handbook includes a description of the impact of the Paris Agreement on climate change on EU law, including the two « legislative packages » and the new « Governance of the Energy Union » proposed by the Commission.