Judgment of the Court (First Chamber) of 28 May 2020 (request for a preliminary ruling from the Bundesverwaltungsgericht — Germany) — IL and Others v Land Nordrhein-Westfalen
(Case C-535/18) 1
(Reference for a preliminary ruling — Environment — Aarhus Convention — Directive 2011/92/EU — Assessment of the effects of certain projects on the environment — Public participation in the decision-making process — Irregularities vitiating the procedure for approving a project — Access to justice — Limitations laid down by national law — Directive 2000/60/EC — EU action in the field of water policy — Deterioration of a body of groundwater — Arrangements for assessment — Right of individuals to take measures in order to prevent pollution — Standing to bring proceedings before the national courts)
Language of the case: German
Referring court
Bundesverwaltungsgericht
Parties to the main proceedings
Claimants: IL, JK, KJ, LI, NG, MH, OF, PE; Heirs of QD, consisting of RC and SB; TA, UZ, VY, WX
Defendant: Land Nordrhein-Westfalen
Operative part of the judgment
Article 11(1)(b) of Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment must be interpreted as permitting Member States to provide that, when a procedural defect vitiating the decision approving a project does not alter the meaning of that decision, an application for annulment of that decision is admissible only if the irregularity at issue has denied the claimant his or her right to participate in the environmental decision-making process, guaranteed by Article 6 of that directive.
Article 4 of Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water policy must be interpreted as precluding a situation where it is only after a project has been approved that the competent authority carries out the checks to establish whether the requirements laid down in that framework have been met, including the requirement to prevent the deterioration in the status of bodies of water, both surface water and groundwater, which are affected by the project.
Article 6 of Directive 2011/92 must be interpreted as meaning that the information to be made available to the public during the procedure for approving a project must include the data that is necessary in order to assess the effects of that project on the water, in the light of the criteria and requirements laid down in, inter alia, Article 4(1) of Directive 2000/60.
Article 4(1)(b)(i) of Directive 2000/60 must be interpreted as meaning that, first, the exceedance of at least one of the quality standards or threshold values referred to in Article 3(1) of Directive 2006/118/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on the protection of groundwater against pollution and deterioration and, second, a foreseeable increase in the concentration of a pollutant when the threshold set for that pollutant has already been exceeded must be regarded as a deterioration in the chemical status of a body of groundwater as a result of a project. The values measured at each monitoring point must be taken into account individually.
Part (b) of the first paragraph of Article 1 of Directive 2000/60 and the first indent of the second paragraph of Article 1 of that directive, together with Article 4(1)(b) thereof, read in the light of Article 19 TEU and Article 288 TFEU, must be interpreted as meaning that the members of the public concerned by a project must be able to assert, before the competent national courts, that there has been a breach of the requirements to prevent the deterioration of bodies of water and to improve the status of those bodies of water, if that breach directly concerns them.
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1 OJ C 427, 26.11.2018.