The European Union, with only 7.5% of the world’s population, is responsible for a major part of the contamination of the planet, and is a major contributor to the problems of the global environment.
Fortunately, Europe has both the capacity and the experience to fight effectively against these problems, even in this ‘twenty-fifth hour’ of environmental degradation. This timely book identifies some of the weaknesses of the public enforcement mechanism inherent in Articles 258–260 TFEU, and suggests how that mechanism could be improved in order to promote the overall effectiveness of EU law and environmental law in particular.
Starting from the idea that the European Union lacks a strong enforcement body to prevent Member States from exploiting loopholes in its legal system, the author thoroughly investigates the extent to which the effectiveness of the EU’s public enforcement provisions depends on voluntary compliance or on actual enforcement mechanisms. He shows that, while preventive procedures should always precede enforcement actions, European environmental law cannot be sufficiently promoted without stronger legal enforcement measures.