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Climate Litigation Momentum Building in Europe By Sylvie Gallage-Alwis and Gaëtan de Robillard
W
hile 2020 will go down in history as “the year of pandemic,” decisions handed down in 2019 and the news at the beginning of the year, before the Coronavirus superseded everything else, indicate plenty of pent-up energy behind climate litigation in Europe. France, whose failure to act for the protection of the environment has been acknowledged by European and national courts, is becoming the scene of strategic actions against flimsy regulation and the parties that profit by it. Such claims will be at the origin of copycat actions. It is already happening in the form of toxic tort claims. Authorities have adopted an increasing number of environmental standards at international, European and domestic levels of governance. Notably, they refer to the right to pure air, health and, more generally, the right to life and family. To enforce these rights, actions are being brought before administrative, civil and criminal courts — a pattern familiar to practitioners in the field of toxic tort. It consists first in obtaining decisions in which the state’s responsibility is engaged on principle, and then turning to companies for compensation.
