The final verdict to the Urgenda case provided by the Dutch Supreme Court has been called a victory in the fight to limit climate change and a milestone in public interest litigation, at least in the Netherlands. As a consequence, the Dutch state will have to reduce ghg-emissions by 25% compared with 1990 at the end of 2020. The judgment has attracted widespread acclaim for being ‘courageous’ and exploring unknown legal territory. However, a closer look at the reasoning of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court still leaves many questions, which are address in this manuscript.

On June 22, 2022, the European Commission proposed a nature restoration regulation with the aim of restoring degraded ecosystems across the EU by 2050. Under the proposal, Member States must prepare national restoration plans to meet various ecosystem-specific targets and obligations. Controversial is the non-deterioration obligation that will apply in areas where restoration measures are taken and in areas where certain habitat types occur. After the European Parliament (ep) and the European (Environment) Council had both adopted positions that include significant amendments of the non-deterioration provisions, in November 2023 the Council announced a compromise text as the result of the trilogue. This contribution assesses how the compromise text of the non-deterioration obligation addresses drawbacks from the previous proposals, identifies associated questions and offers some suggestions for the interpretation.

This article provides a comparative analysis of the regulation of ammonia emissions, primarily from livestock installations, in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. It discusses the challenges of regulating agricultural ammonia emissions in view of the rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union (cjeu) on Art. 6(3) of the Habitats Directive. It is argued that the need to ensure certainty concerning the absence of significant effects on Natura 2000 sites is challenged by the uncertainties regarding both the state of individual habitat types and the potential impact of individual projects. A more integrated or programmatic approach may provide an alternative approach to individual assessments, but it is necessary to ensure that additional loads from new or enlarged livestock installations are permitted in areas with high ammonia loads only where it is certain that a programmatic approach will ensure that there are no harmful effects. This might be an almost impossible task.

Even with extensive case law before the cjeu on the notion of ‘waste’, questions remain around classification of substances as waste and end-of-waste status of certain waste streams. This uncertainty hampers the transition to a circular economy. In the case at hand, a mixture of sludge from paper production and sludge from a municipal wastewater treatment plant was used as fuel for the paper plant. Although the majority (97%) of the mixture came from the paper production process and therefore would be a by-product (and hence not waste), and only 3% of the mixture stemming from the municipal waste water facility qualify waste, the mixture as a whole is assumed to be waste. Whether the ‘end of waste-criteria’ of Article 6(1) Waste Framework Directive can successfully be applied to the case, is up to the national court to decide. In addition, the case is interesting as an affirmation of the ‘Rheinmühlen/Elchinov-doctrine’.