Action brought on 26 February 2024 – Global Legal Action Network and CAN-Europe v Commission
(Case T-120/24)
Language of the case: English
Parties
Applicants: Global Legal Action Network (Galway, Ireland), Climate Action Network Europe (CAN-Europe) (Brussels, Belgium) (represented by: H. Leith, Barrister-at-Law)
Defendant: European Commission
Form of order sought
The applicants claim that the Court should:
annul the decision of the Commission (‘the contested decision’), sent by letter of 14 December 2023, by which it rejected a request for internal review dated 23 August 2023 brought by the applicants pursuant to Article 10 of the Aarhus Regulation; 1
order the Commission to meet the applicants’ costs of the proceedings.
Pleas in law and main arguments
In support of the action, the applicants rely on two pleas in law.
First plea in law, alleging that the contested decision erred in rejecting Section IV of the request for internal review as inadmissible. Any finding that the grounds in section IV of the request or internal review were incapable of supporting the applicants’ request for internal review was also erroneous. These errors arose from the application of the wrong legal test and/or from manifest errors of assessment.
Second plea in law, alleging that the contested decision erred in rejecting as unfounded the applicants’ grounds seeking an internal review of Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2023/1319 of 28 June 2023. 1 This plea raises four sub-grounds, which demonstrate that the wrong legal test was applied and/or that the contested decision was based on manifest errors of assessment.
First sub-ground, arguing that the contested decision erred in finding that there is no applicable legal duty to assess the global greenhouse gas emissions reductions that would be necessary to hold global warming to 1.5o C (entailing a duty to assess the feasibility of emissions pathways to do so, including as to the feasibility of reliance on carbon dioxide removal technologies assumed by certain pathways). The contested decision also erred in suggesting that account had been taken of the extent to which it is feasible to rely on carbon dioxide removal technologies.
Second sub-ground, alleging that the contested decision erred in finding that there is no legal duty on the European Union to set its 2030 emissions targets consistently with a reasonable measure of its fair share of the global emissions reductions that would be necessary to hold global warming to 1.5o C.
Third sub-ground, arguing that the contested decision erred in rejecting the ground of the internal review contending that the Union is under a duty to achieve, towards a reasonable measure of its fair share, the full extent of emissions reductions that it can achieve domestically. The contested decision did not dispute the existence of this duty or attempt to demonstrate that the annual emissions allocations had been set in accordance with such a duty.
Fourth sub-ground, alleging that the contested decision erred in rejecting the ground of the internal review contending that the assessment supporting the annual emissions allocations failed to consider fundamental rights, or the impact on fundamental rights of climate change or the contribution to climate change that would result from the Union’s emissions targets. The contested decision referred only to the consideration given in that assessment, to some but not all fundamental rights. That assessment does not assess at all the extent to which climate change (including the climate change to which the Union’s emissions targets would contribute) would affect those fundamental rights.
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1 Regulation (EC) No 1367/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 September 2006 on the application of the provisions of the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters to Community institutions and bodies, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2021/1767 (OJ 2006 L 264, p. 13).
1 Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2023/1319 of 28 June 2023 amending Implementing Decision (EU) 2020/2126 to revise Member States’ annual emission allocations for the period from 2023 to 2030 (OJ 2023 L 163, p. 9).