by Jan Haverkamp, 13 February 2019
The petition committee of the European Parliament (PETI) received over the last years several large petitions expressing concern about transboundary nuclear issues in countries like Belgium, the Czech Republic, the UK, Hungary and others. In reaction to that, it asked the Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Internal Policies of the Union to commission a study to address the issues raised in these petitions. The lead authors of that study, prof. Michael Faure from the Netherlands Maastricht University department of environmental law and the Rotterdam based Erasmus School of Law and Dr. Kévine Kindji of the Maastricht European Institute of Transnational Legal Research (METRO) at Maastricht University, produced a comprehensive overview of legal developments around transboundary nuclear issues, including a large chapter on the developments of environmental liability.
The study addresses the EU situation within the framework of international bodies and agreements like the IAEA and the Convention on Nuclear Safety, issues of public enforcement of international legal obligations on transboundary nuclear issues, addresses the tension between the EU Treaties and Euratom, covers citizen en NGO involvement in decision making, and comes with ten recommendations in which the European Union could improve the haphazard current situation with better regulatory oversight, harmonisation of rules, and improvement of the nuclear liability regime and implementation thereof.
The study gives a very good overview of the state of play of what is a very dynamic legal situation.
The study can be downloaded here.