CYIL vol. 10 (2019)

CYIL 10 ȍ2019Ȏ REFLECTIONS ON THE TOPIC OF THE CONCEPT OF PROTECTION … practical application of the other substantive environmental rights enshrined in international human rights law and protection by the rules of international environmental law itself. The protection of substantive right to environment under international law is supported by rules of the EU law, as well. Key EU documents as far as the protection of substantive human right to environment are the non-binding high-level political Dublin Declaration on “The Environmental Imperative” of the European Council, adopted on 7 July 1990, The Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998, Aarhus Convention) signed and ratified by the EU and Directive 2003/35/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 May 2003 providing for public participation in respect of the drawing up of certain plans and programmes relating to the environment and amending with regard to public participation and access to justice Council Directives 85/337/EEC and 96/61/EC. When examining these and other EU law rules, it is clear that they do not further develop the concept of direct protection of this substantive right, but instead concentrate themselves on the development of protection of procedural environmental rights, created in order to protect the right to environment indirectly, and substantively-understood rights – rights to water and right to sanitation (right to safe hygienic conditions of the environment) whose practical application contributes to the protection of substantive right to environment indirectly, as well. The protection of right to environment also benefits indirectly from the very existence of EU environmental law as such, which protects the environment as a value essential to the realization of the right to environment itself in a substantive form. EU law also includes the potential for indirect protection of substantive right to environment by respecting the abovementioned European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) and certain provisions of the abovementioned Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000, 2007).

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