Ludwig Krämer

Climate change, the ever-increasing global population which will reach nine billon people within the next generation, and the continued loss of biodiversity demonstrate to everybody that the need to protect the environment is one of the big challenges of the present. Worldwide have countries reacted to that challenge and adopted legislations, regulations and agreements to protect the environment, the most recent one being the global climate change agreement of Paris 2016.
The European Union adopted provisions to protect the environment since more than forty years. Today, it has a comprehensive set of rules, which bind its Member States, private companies and individual citizens. These provisions are completed by national, regional and local regulations which deal with the different aspects of the environment, water and air, noise and waste, nature conservation and land use. The regulatory net within the EU to protect the environment is quite dense.
The biggest problem which environmental law faces, though, is that the legislation to protect the environment is only very imperfectly applied. Day by day, pollution of the air, water and the soil occurs. Climate change gases are emitted in quantities which run against the legally binding provisions that were so solemnly agreed by the global community. Town and country planning measures, agricultural activities, fishing practices, industry and transport, energy and trade – all activities contribute to putting at risk the environment which the EU and all its governments are committed and obliged to protect.

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