Book Review: EU Environmental Law, Governance and Decision-Making; EU Environmental Law and the Internal Market

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EU Environmental Law, Governance and Decision-Making , 2 nd edn, by Lee Maria Hart Publishing , 2014, 300 pp, £25 pb; ISBN 9781849464215

EU Environmental Law and the Internal Market , by Sadeleer Nicolas de Oxford University Press , 2014, 560 pp, £95 hb; ISBN 9780199675432

Book Reviews

European Union (EU) environmental law is a moving target. Over the last decades, some of the key achievements of EU environmental law have been to facilitate the general public's access to information, participation in decision making, and access to justice in environmental matters. The early development of EU environmental law was closely related to the creation and completion of the EU internal market, and the environmental challenges this inevitably entails. More recently, new challenges have been presented by the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty,²⁷including a new treaty title on energy issues, the turmoil created by the global financial crisis, and the emergence of new technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and geoengineering.

The body of literature on EU environmental law has grown expansively, with Krämer,²⁸Fisher, Lange and Scotford,²⁹Jans and Vedder³⁰amongst the leading scholars to give a general and encyclopaedic overview of the field.³¹The two books subject to this review depart from this approach and focus on specific elements and recent challenges of EU environmental law. In the second edition of her monograph, EU Environmental Law, Governance and Decision-Making, Maria Lee engages with important 'meta' questions about legitimacy, democracy, and the role of science and politics in EU environmental law. Taking another approach in his volume, EU Environmental Law and the Internal Market, Nicolas de Sadeleer examines EU environmental law through the free movement and competition law lenses. Both books are welcome additions to the existing scholarship.

The key message conveyed by Maria Lee in EU Environmental Law, Governance and Decision-Making is that environmental protection and decision making depend on two main factors: specialized information on the physical state of the world, and political judgments on values and priorities (p. v). Risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis are key tools in the politically motivated decision-making process. Lee looks at the integration of decision making and governance into EU...