The Compliance Committee of the Aarhus Convention (UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters) has accepted for review a complaint filed by Greenpeace Romania regarding the enormous legal costs imposed on the organisation in lawsuits against companies in the fossil fuel sector, the environmental group announced on Thursday.
According to the quoted source, the amounts decided or requested so far approach 1 million lei.
"Through this complaint, Greenpeace claims that unclear legislation and the manner in which courts enforce the rules regarding legal costs turn environmental cases into an inaccessible privilege for civil society, journalists and citizens," the organisation's representatives argue.
Thus, the Aarhus Convention compels the signatory states, including Romania, to ensure that environmental litigations are not "excessively costly" for those who initiate them, so that all citizens and civil society have the right to seek justice in cases involving projects with significant ecological impact.
"When an environmental organisation ends up paying nearly 1 million lei just for exercising its right to challenge in court a project raising legal concerns, it is no longer justice but intimidation. The Aarhus Convention makes it clear that environmental cases must not be prohibitively expensive. Access to justice must be for everyone, not only for those with enormous resources," Executive Director of Greenpeace Romania Elena Ionescu said, as quoted in the release.
In the past years, Greenpeace Romania has filed several lawsuits against the Neptune Deep project, highlighting serious violations of environmental legislation.
The companies involved have repeatedly requested legal costs amounting to hundreds of thousands of lei, although the organisation acted solely in the public interest, without any economic gain. In some cases, judges formally recognised Romania's obligations under the Aarhus Convention and partially reduced the amounts requested by the companies, however, even after these cuts, the level of legal costs remains high enough to discourage any NGO or citizen from challenging decisions with environmental impact, the environmental organization mentioned.
This year, Greenpeace Romania was the target of a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) initiated by the state-owned company Romgaz, which sought the organisation's dissolution in court - an explicit attempt to remove a critical voice from the public sphere.
"The situation in Romania involving Greenpeace is also mentioned in the UN Special Rapporteur's report on human rights defenders. The report describes increasing pressures on those who challenge major economic interests, including costly lawsuits and attempts at public defamation. The case in Romania fits a worrying European trend: civic and environmental organisations are increasingly targeted by political attacks, funding cuts or abusive lawsuits, while the public debate is dominated by industries with vast resources," the document reveals.
The Aarhus Convention is an international treaty ratified by Romania which guarantees three fundamental environmental rights: access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice.
The Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee examines complaints regarding states' failure to observe these obligations and issues recommendations, including on the establishment of objective criteria and reasonable maximum limits for legal costs, so that access to justice is not impeded by clearly disproportionate amounts.
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