The making of a New European legal culture: the Aarhus Convention

The Aarhus Convention entered into force more than 20 years ago. It lays down the pillars of environmental democracy, that is a governance systems where citizens and civil society organisations are fully involved in the decisions affecting the environment we all live in. On the one hand the Convention drew on the experience of those jurisdictions where environmental concerns run deeper. On the other hand, once enacted, it was expected to bring about important changes in those jurisdictions which were less sensible to these issues. As such, the Convention is an ideal testing ground upon where to study how legal principles, rules and institutions behave once they are moved from one jurisdiction to another and how the recipient jurisdiction reacts at receiving a transplant. The analysis from a legal cultural approach the law in the EU and 8 Member States provides a much richer picture about how the Aarhus Convention has been implement and what are the legal cultural enablers and obstacles to the full development of environmental democracy in different jurisdictions. Additionally, the research assesses how far is a common European legal culture developing in core areas not just of environmental, but of administrative and to a large extent of constitutional law? The book provides an updated coverage of the implementation of the Aarhus Convention at both EU level and in a relevant number of Member States and will be useful to academics and practitioners alike.