Who gets to challenge the EU’s climate laws? A new study by the The Legal Clinic in EU Environmental Law at Roma Tre University asks whether environmental organisations should be able to defend the climate and environment as shared European interests – including on behalf of future generations.
The study proposes rethinking how EU law allows environmental organisations, like Greenpeace EU, to bring cases before the EU courts.
Read the study
What would you change about EU treaties? The right to challenge EU law
When I had my first interview for my current role at Greenpeace, I was asked what I would change in the EU treaties if I could change absolutely anything.
A very Greenpeace question – and needed a Greenpeace answer: when in doubt, go big.
I could have talked about the powers of the European Parliament, or the division of competences between the EU and its Member States. But at the last minute, I simply said: “Legal standing for individuals.”
The only other lawyer in the room smiled. He said he would have been disappointed if I hadn’t mentioned Plaumann.
Plaumann is a decades-old judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU, dating back to 1963, that interpreted the EU Treaties’ rules on who can challenge EU laws in court and under what conditions. But its implications reach far beyond the world of EU lawyers: they still affect who can ask the courts to hold EU institutions to account
The result is a fundamental question: what happens when the rules governing access to justice — and the courts’ interpretation of them — make it almost impossible to challenge EU policies and laws that shape our lives?
Why legal standing matters for climate action
Imagine that the European Union adopts a law that affects hundreds of millions of people. Imagine that you believe this law violates the EU treaties, undermines fundamental rights or fails to comply with the Union’s own environmental obligations.
Can you ask the EU courts to review it? The answer is: not necessarily.
Under Article 263(4) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, individuals and civil society organisations (like Greenpeace EU) can challenge certain EU laws only if they meet specific admissibility requirements. One of the main obstacles is the requirement that applicants be “individually concerned”. Under the Court of Justice’s longstanding interpretation of this requirement, it is not enough to show that a measure affects you: you must show that it affects you in a way that distinguishes you individually from all other people. This restrictive test is not expressly set out in the Treaties themselves, but stems from the Court’s interpretation of them, most notably in Plaumann, — an interpretation that the Court could reconsider without requiring a change to the Treaties. The EU’s restrictive approach to access to justice in environmental matters has also been found incompatible with the Aarhus Convention’s access to justice requirements by its Compliance Committee.
This creates a paradox for climate litigation. Climate change affects people across borders and generations, while EU climate legislation addresses a problem that concerns society as a whole. Yet the broader and more general the measure, the harder it can be for an individual to show that they are affected in a uniquely distinguishing way.
The collective nature of the harm of the climate crisis can therefore become an obstacle to legally challenging inadequate climate measures.
The difficulties are illustrated by the case Carvalho, where a group of families and an association challenged EU climate legislation, arguing that it did not provide sufficient protection against climate change. The EU courts dismissed their action as inadmissible. Their claims were not rejected following a substantive assessment of whether the legislation provided adequate climate protection, but because the EU courts considered the applicants failed to meet the requirements for bringing the case.
A complete system of remedies – but do they work in practice?
The EU Court’s response to concerns about restrictive standing rules and access to justice is the mantra that the EU legal order provides a “complete system of legal remedies”. Even if individuals and organisations cannot challenge EU legislation directly, other routes to judicial review should, in principle, be available.
Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights guarantees the right to an effective remedy and a fair trial. But this guarantee does not automatically confer standing to challenge EU laws directly. The question is whether the alternative routes available in practice provide effective judicial protection when the legality of EU climate action is at stake.
But having alternative routes on paper is not the same as being able to use them in practice.
A recent case illustrates the problem. In GLAN and CAN Europe v Commission (Case T-120/24, judgment of 2 September 2026), environmental organisations sought to use a procedure under the Aarhus Regulation to challenge the Commission’s handling of the EU climate framework. The case exposed an important limitation: this alternative procedure cannot be used to obtain a judicial review of the level of climate ambition chosen by the EU legislature. In other words, it does not provide a straightforward route for asking a court to examine whether the EU’s climate targets are sufficiently ambitious to comply with its legal obligations.
Another route may exist in principle. People and NGOs can sometimes challenge EU climate measures implemented by a EU Member State in national courts, which can ask the Court of Justice of the EU to assess whether those measures are valid. But this depends on an appropriate case reaching a national court and that court deciding to refer the question. Whether this legal mechanism can fill the gap in climate cases remains uncertain.
This raises a fundamental question: if direct challenges are exceptionally difficult and alternative routes do not reliably allow courts to examine the substance of the EU’s climate ambition, how complete is the system of judicial protection in practice?
This question is particularly pressing given legal scholars’ arguments that the EU’s 2040 climate target falls short of its obligations under EU and international law. These claims have not been established by a court ruling on the target’s legality. But if environmental organisations cannot realistically bring such questions before a court, how can the EU’s compliance with its climate obligations be effectively scrutinised?
Rethinking who can defend Europe’s common interests
Courts around the world are increasingly addressing governments’ climate obligations and the barriers to climate justice. In KlimaSeniorinnen v Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of the right to respect for private and family life and, carving out a tailored approach in climate cases, recognised that representative environmental organisations can have standing in climate cases. In 2025, the International Court of Justice also clarified states’ obligations under international law in its advisory opinion on climate change.
Against this backdrop, a question arises: where is the Court of Justice of the EU? If restrictive standing rules under the EU Treaties, reinforced by the Court’s rigid interpretation of them, make it extremely difficult to challenge the Union’s climate ambition, how can its compliance with its legal obligations — including those relating to human rights, the Paris Agreement and the precautionary principle — be effectively scrutinised?
A recent Opinion by Advocate General Ćapeta offers a possible opening. In Medel and Others v Council, the Advocate General suggested that the reasoning behind the European Court of Human Rights’ recognition of association standing in KlimaSeniorinnen could inform the interpretation of Article 263(4) TFEU, allowing greater consideration of the collective interests associations defend. Although the Opinion is not binding on the Court of Justice, it brings renewed attention to the question at the heart of the Legal Clinic’s study: whether environmental organisations can defend collective interests before the EU courts.
The EU4GT Legal Clinic’s study explores a related argument: that the environment and climate should be understood as European common goods protected by EU primary law, and that environmental organisations should be recognised as representative bodies able to defend these shared interests on behalf of present and future generations.
This would not mean giving NGOs an unrestricted right to challenge every EU act. It would mean reconsidering whether the Plaumann doctrine adequately reflects the collective and intergenerational nature of environmental interests particularly in the context of climate change.
The debate matters now. As the EU sets its climate objectives for the coming decades, we need to ask not only whether its policies are adequate, but also whether the legal system provides meaningful opportunities to challenge them when their legality is called into question. This is particularly important in the current context of corporate lobbying and calls for deregulation across the EU, while civil society organisations continue to face significant legal barriers to challenging EU legislation in court.
Ultimately, the question is whether the EU’s system of justice can protect the common interests its laws are meant to safeguard – and whether those seeking to uphold the law can get through the courtroom door.
Mattia Bosio is legal counsel for Greenpeace EU in Brussels
