Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 in Moot Court on EU Environmental Law
Recently, nine Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 students successfully participated in a comparative moot court on the implementation of EU environmental law. The moot court was initiated and organized by the European Commission. The Dutch (Utrecht) delegation was coached by prof. dr. Ch.W. Backes, dr. H.K. Gillissen and dr. S. Akerboom, all part of Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law.
The case at hand concerned a legal dispute over the realization of a small wind farm in a Natura 2000 area and the environmental impact hereof. Students prepared written pleadings, explaining the applicable legal arguments from three perspectives: an environmental NGO, a wind farm operator and a governmental body, namely the province. Moreover, on 10 May 2019, the students pleaded their arguments at a hearing before the Council of State, The Hague. The case was decided by a (fictional) judgment of the Judicial Division of the Council of State. Both the written documents and the oral pleading were of an exceptional high quality, even though the students only had very little time to prepare this case.
On 17 May 2019, the students presented the results of the Dutch mock trial in a comparative session with teams from other EU countries in a public session at the Green Week in Brussels. The results were compared and discussed with judges from several member states, officials from the EU Commission and the public. The results of this comparison was presented in the closing session of the Green Week with a reaction of Commissionar Carmena Vella. 鈥淲e noticed that while there were some disparities in the national procedures the ground principles of environmental law proceeding were quite similar across all compared member states. The Netherlands were however standing out by the possibility to apply the administrative loop, a system which is unique to Dutch law and sparked the interest of the other member states鈥
