Published: 26 November 2025. Written by: Päivi Leino-Sandberg and Emily Barritt
Last week, as the world’s attention focused on the COP30 in Belem, another international meeting gathered in the far cooler setting of Lake Geneva. The participants at this meeting were also preoccupied with how the world responds to the triple planetary crisis, and with the fate of multilateralism and international institutions. And at this meeting too, the delicate balance of power between citizens and states was askew.
In this blog we outline some of the moves made by the EU and its Member States and the EU Commission, which jeopardized some of the basic principles and objectives of the Convention. Academics have the right to be present at the MOP for the purpose of providing an external scrutiny of the parties’ actions and calling them to account. Now is a good time to ask how the Commission implements the EU treaty commitment to international law, democracy and human rights enshrined in Article 3(5) TEU, also keeping in mind that the EU represents 27 of the overall 48 parties to the Convention.
This meeting was the 8th Meeting of the Parties of the UNECE Aarhus Convention, which happens every four years. Whilst the Aarhus Convention is ostensibly designed to protect the three procedural rights of access to environmental information, public participation in environmental decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters, it is also committed to realizing ‘the right of present and future generations to live in an environment adequate to human health and well-being’ (art 1). The Convention was signed in 1998 long before the UNGA assembly started making resolutions on the subject.
Alongside this very early international commitment to a substantive right to a healthy environment, the Convention has a remarkable and robust compliance architecture. The first structure is the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee: a ‘non-confrontational, non-judicial and consultative’ committee developed to facilitate Parties compliance with the Convention and established by Decision I/7 in accordance with article 15 of the Convention. The second, is a more recent addition to the Convention’s architecture, is the Rapid Response Mechanism for Environmental Defenders in the form of a UN Special Rapporteur, established by Decision VII/9 of the MOP. The Rapid Reaction Mechanism was designed to reinforce art 3(8) of the Convention which states that:
Each Party shall ensure that persons exercising their rights in conformity with the provisions of this Convention shall not be penalized, persecuted or harassed in any way for their involvement.
At this MOP, both structures were put in peril, thanks in no small part to the actions of the EU and its Member States and the EU Commission, who had a significant helping hand in this task from the United Kingdom. Indeed – the two parties the EU and the UK were remarkably aligned despite the separation of Brexit. While the political cost to abandoning the Convention altogether might be high, the alternative strategy seems to be to neutralize it from inside, and underline that you as a party should be entitled to ‘special treatment’.
Events at the MOP
First, the EU introduced substantial changes to the draft of Decision VIII/9 on promoting the effective protection of environmental defenders at midnight before the opening of the MOP. Proposed changes to draft decisions should have been made by 27 October, 3 weeks before the MOP. This timeline was critical to allowing all Parties to the Convention sufficient time to appropriately consider Convention documents. Given the EUs tardiness, it was necessary to set up a contact group during the MOP.
For example, the EU requested the removal of the reference to the art 1 right of present and future generations to an environment adequate to human health and well-being from art 7(e), as well as the removal of reference to ‘protecting environmental defenders from any use of force against them during peaceful environmental protest’ from art 8, preferring instead the language of ‘reasonable and proportionate’ force in relation to peaceful protesters. These are telling examples. Given the magnitude of some of these amendments therefore, the last minute timing of the EU meant that not all Parties were able to evaluate the changes given that these discussions happened outside of the main meeting.
Second, following the lead of the United Kingdom, the EU and its Member States attempted to postpone any discussion of the findings of the Aarhus Compliance Committee to the next MOP scheduled for 2029, the argument being that they had not had sufficient time to consider the findings. However, discussion on and endorsement of the findings had happened according to the same timeline for six consecutive MOPs. Therefore the attempted delay would have amounted to a retrospective change of procedural rules. As far as the EU is concerned, it is also difficult to understand why this was necessary – the mandate to approve the critical findings concerning the EU itself had been approved in the Council in good time before the MOP.
When confronted with the news of this proposed move, the Chair of the ACCC, Professor Áine Ryall told the Parties that: ‘We have played by your rules. We complied with all of the timeframes at enormous cost, to the Committee and to the Secretariat.’ She warned the parties that they should ‘be careful what you wish for’ and reminded them that:
“The Compliance Committee is seen as a beacon and a leading light on the rule of law and democracy, something that I know is precious to all of the Parties here. And for you then to undermine the integrity of your own compliance mechanism, that sends an incredibly negative signal beyond these four walls.”
Following these remarks, Dame Eleanor Sharpston, member of the ACCC and former Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union, addressing her remarks directly to her former employer, said that:
You the parties made the rules, the rules have applied for the last six meetings, and the Compliance Committee has played scrupulously by the rules laid down. None of the documents were submitted out of time. You are the masters of the rules of procedure, but on an ordinary view of the rule of the law, you change the rules for the future, you do not retrofit them…
After these masterful and measured lessons in legitimacy, the EU changed its position. However, the UK remained unmoved by any reminders about the basic tenants of the Rule of Law and refused to endorse any of the findings.
Third, the MOP is responsible for electing the ACCC, whose members are to ‘serve in their personal capacity’ and to be ‘of high moral character and recognized competence in the fields to which the Convention relates, including persons having legal experience’.
While some of the Member states had also nominated candidates, the EU had decided to nominate a member of the Commission Legal Service to serve in the Aarhus Compliance Committee, The term ’in their personal capacity’ has so far been understood to exclude serving members of the executive branch of a party to the Convention – independence is required in terms of fact and perception.
There is the earlier example of Eva Kruzikova from the Czech Republic, who resigned from the ACCC in 2006 when she was appointed to a permanent government position.
In the face of strong resistance from NGOs, other Parties and the ACCC itself, the Commission justified the choice with EU exceptionalism. In its view, the Commission should not be compared with a national government but should be treated as unique, tasked as the independent guardian of legality and observance of EU law. Yet, Commission argumentation makes no reference to Article 11 of the EU staff regulations, under which a legal service official must always ‘carry out his duties and conduct himself solely with the interests of the Union in mind.’
Faced with the announcement that the Chair of the ACCC would resign and may be joined by various other ACCC members wishing to protect the integrity and independence of the Committee, the Commission ultimately withdrew its Candidate. However, it failed to do so with grace, insisting that the MOP should be prepared to approve its candidate by consensus.
Underlying each of these moves was a homogenous approach to negotiation, which is at least partly dictated by the core principle of unity in EU external relations: The Commission speaks while the Member States remain silent. Even though the Aarhus Convention is a mixed agreement and Member States remain contracting parties to it, there is no Member State pushback in public, which leaves the Commission alone to dictate the narrative. A visible example of this was also the EU’s announcement, when electing the Special Rapporteur for environmental defenders, that it would vote as a block, leaving the Commission to drop 27 ballots in the ballot box.
Finally, all of these destabilising moves were reinforced by the lack of financing for the Convention. As the Secretariat reported, there remains 20,000 USD in the trust fund of the Convention for 2026. Even here the EU tabled proposals, defined by other speakers as ‘aggressive’. We are soon approaching a stage where the Convention mechanisms are effectively frozen by refusing contributions.
Fate of Environmental Democracy in the EU – and beyond
Von der Leyen’s political guidelines underline how ‘Europe’s future in a fractured world will depend on having a strong democracy and on defending the values that give us the freedoms and rights that we cherish’. She alerts us to how ‘[o]ur democratic systems and institutions are under attack’ and stresses that’ [w]e need to do more to protect our democracy.’ At the same time, the Commission is conducting an attack on a key international regime protecting those very same democratic values.
That the current Commission does not believe in transparency or public participation, or see that these principles set requirements on its own actions, has been broadly visible in its own policy-making practices. Seldom has this been more visible than in its approach to the MOP.