Published: 3 February 2025. Writers: Kati Kulovesi, Martin Björklund, Otto Bruun, Laura Kolehmainen, Vilja Johansson, Maiju Mähönen and Milka Sormunen
The Supreme Administrative Court’s ruling on Finnish Climate Case II broadened access to justice but ultimately deferred to the Government’s assurances of future climate action. This blog post analyzes the case from two perspectives—one cautiously optimistic and the other more critical.
On 8 January 2025, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled on Finnish Climate Case II, filed in August 2024 by a coalition of environmental and human rights NGOs. The plaintiffs argued that the Finnish Government’s inaction on the country’s stalling net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions violated both Finnish and EU climate law as well as human rights obligations, referencing the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) 2024 KlimaSeniorinnen judgment.
A similar appeal from November 2022 was dismissed by the Finnish Supreme Administrative Court on procedural grounds in June 2023.
This time, the Court reviewed the appeal on its merits, referencing KlimaSeniorinnen to support expanded access to justice. However, the Court ultimately dismissed the appeal, deferring to the Government’s assurances that additional climate policies were in preparation and ruling that it was premature to evaluate the alignment of such policies with legal obligations.
Finland’s LULUCF Crisis and Climate Case I
Finland’s land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sector, once a significant carbon sink, has become a source of GHG emissions, releasing an estimated record 11.8 million tonnes of CO₂ in 2023. The decline is driven, inter alia, by increased logging, bioenergy demand, and declining forest growth.
Finland’s current climate plans under the 2022 Climate Change Act are severely disconnected from this reality, assuming a carbon sink of 18 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2035. The plans consider measures to enhance the sink by just 3 million tonnes sufficient to achieve the legally binding 2035 climate neutrality target.
Meanwhile, the EU’s LULUCF Regulation requires Finland to ensure the sector is not a GHG source in 2021–2025 and contributes towards net removals of 17,8 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2030. Already accumulating, Finland’s shortfall under the LULUCF Regulation could reach tens of millions of tonnes of CO₂ equivalent by 2030, potentially putting at risk also the EU’s collective LULUCF target.
In Finnish Climate Case I, Greenpeace Nordic and the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation argued that the Government’s failure to decide on additional climate policies and amend its outdated climate plans jeopardized both the national 2035 climate neutrality target and Finland’s obligations under EU climate law. However, in June 2023, the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the case on procedural grounds, finding the appeal inadmissible “at this stage” but leaving the door open if Government inaction persisted.
Political Apathy in the Face of Urgency
Since Finnish Climate Case I, Finland’s forest carbon sink has deteriorated further. While the Government that took office in 2023 acknowledged the problem in its 2023 and 2024 Annual Climate Reports under the Climate Change Act, it has taken no concrete action.
On the contrary, the Government has lowered transport fuel taxes and proposed delaying increases to mandated biofuel blending. Additionally, it abandoned plans for further LULUCF policies developed by the previous government, as well as making direct budget cuts to existing policies in the sector.
The Finnish Climate Change Panel and the civil society have repeatedly called for urgent action, while the Minister of the Environment admitted already in 2023 that Finland cannot meet its climate targets with current policies. Around the same time, high-ranking civil servants also acknowledged they “have no clue” how Finland will achieve its binding targets, including those under EU law.
New Legal Action in the Summer of 2024
In response, a coalition of NGOs—including Greenpeace Nordic, the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, Amnesty Finland, Finnish Nature League, Finnish Sámi Youth, and Grandparents for Climate—filed a second climate appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court in early August 2024.
Their key argument was that the Government must adopt a formal decision on additional measures and amend the Medium-Term Climate Plan and LULUCF Sector Climate Plan, as required by Sections 16 and 17 of the Climate Change Act. The Act requires public participation and consultation with the Indigenous Sámi people during the amendment process, and provides for access to justice for challenging any revised plans.
On 8 January 2025, the Court found the case admissible, heavily relying on the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment to emphasise the need for effective legal remedies at the national level. However, when assessing the legality of the Government’s actions, the Court deferred to the Government’s primary responsibility for implementing the Climate Change Act and its assurances that it was in the process of preparing additional measures. The Court hence ruled that the Government’s conduct did not violate the law.
An Optimistic Reading: Putting the Government on Notice (Again)
An optimistic interpretation of the Court’s decision highlights two key points:
First, the Court expanded access to justice beyond the explicit provisions of the Climate Change Act and other national legislation, citing the ECtHR KlimaSeniorinnen judgment.
Significantly, the Court ruled that the right to appeal climate plans under the Climate Change Act does not sufficiently guarantee the rights in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It noted that delays in amending climate plans during the planning period could render measures ineffective, making it impossible to achieve climate targets and rendering appeals futile (para. 66).
Additionally, the Court allowed standing for all members of the diverse NGO coalition behind the appeal, not limiting standing to only organisations meeting the KlimaSeniorinnen criteria.
Second, similar to the first Finnish Climate Case, the Court again put the Government on notice, warning that significant delays in implementing additional measures could lead to a finding of unlawful neglect under the Climate Change Act. It stated that if delays in preparing additional measures made achieving binding targets infeasible within the prescribed timeline, the Government’s obligations would be considered unlawfully neglected (para. 75).
For now, the Court relied on the Government’s assurance that additional measures would be finalised in 2025.
A Critical Reading: Through the Door, But Left Standing in the Vestibule
The primary criticism of the Court’s decision stems from the narrow scope of its judicial scrutiny and strong deference to the Government.
According to the Court, it could only intervene if the Government’s actions were “clearly insufficient”, a threshold the Court defined from the outset as difficult to cross (para. 60). The Court found the threshold unmet because “it was not yet possible to assess in detail whether upcoming additional measures are sufficient to achieve the goals of the Climate Act, as the preparation of the measures is still ongoing” (para 74).
The Court assessed whether the acknowledgment on the need for additional measures in the 2024 Annual Climate Report constituted a violation of the Climate Change Act (paras. 68-69). It concluded that the Government had not breached the law, despite the lack of detailed policies or proposed measures (para. 75). This, as such, was not surprising as the Act primarily relies on mechanisms other than the Annual Climate Report for detailing additional policies.
The NGOs’ main argument was indeed a different one, namely that the Government had breached Sections 16 and 17 of the Climate Change Act, including its procedural obligations to adopt an administrative decision on the need for additional measures and initiate a participatory process to amend the outdated climate plans. The Court recognised the relevance of this argument when finding the case admissible (para. 67), but did not consider it in detail during the merits phase.
The Court’s narrow framing of the relevant legal issues during the merits phase can be interpreted as reluctance to stretch the limits of the Finnish administrative law where passivity by authorities is not traditionally considered justiciable (paras. 49-50). Meanwhile, it is the Government’s passivity and its failure to adhere to the procedural and participatory obligations of the Climate Change Act that jeopardize the achievement of the 2035 climate neutrality target. Like the Paris Agreement and various national climate framework laws, the Finnish Climate Change Act is built on procedural obligations and participatory rights, relying on public pressure to ensure that climate targets are met.
Assessing the merits of the case, the Court applied a deferential standard of review and relied on assurances made in the Government’s written pleadings that preparations for the adoption of additional policies were ongoing (para. 72). The Government emphasised preparations for a new Medium-term Climate Plan (required by the Climate Change Act each four-year term) and the National Climate and Energy Strategy (prepared without a legal basis), both of which are scheduled for completion in 2025.
Critically, however, the Government intends only to review, rather than amend, the drastically outdated LULUCF sector climate plan—an essential tool for identifying and preparing sector-specific additional measures. Moreover, the planned review process is not as clearly regulated by the Climate Change Act as the amendment process for additional measures under Section 17 of the Act (invoked by the NGOs), particularly in terms of stakeholder and Sámi consultations. Most importantly, the Government is yet to initiate this review process, which, according to its written pleadings, was to take place in 2024–2025.
The Court references the criteria for assessing governmental climate (in)action and compliance with positive obligations under the ECHR, as established in KlimaSeniorinnen (para. 62). However, in this case, the Court found no reason to intervene.
The Court acknowledged that the gap between current LULUCF sector emissions and the removals required by national climate plans was, at the time, estimated at (a significant) 19 million tonnes of CO₂ (para 74). The Court deferred, however, to the Government’s assurance that it would adopt additional measures and did not consider at this stage the most probable scenario—that Government inaction had already reached a critical point and was seriously undermining the feasibility of meeting its binding climate targets.
This seems inconsistent with the Court’s earlier justification for expanding access to justice, which emphasized the risk of ineffective measures jeopardizing the achievement of climate targets It also calls into question whether the Court’s assessment of the KlimaSeniorinnen criteria was sufficiently thorough, especially the requirement for national authorities to ”provide evidence showing whether they have duly complied, or are in the process of complying, with the relevant GHG reduction targets” and to act ”in good time and in an appropriate and consistent manner” in implementing climate targets (para. 550 of KlimaSeniorinnen).
Overall, the Court’s approach appears to grant governments considerable leeway to avoid accusations of insufficient decision-making simply by claiming that the relevant decisions are still under consideration. This risks creating a recurring pattern—only too frequently observed in the climate policy context—where commitments to adequate climate action remain perpetually ”in progress” but are never fully realized.
Given the escalating LULUCF crisis, the Court’s decision is prone to future criticism in the likely scenario that Finland falls significantly short of its national and EU law obligations. The LULUCF sector gap has subsequently widened to an estimated 30 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent—approximately three-quarters of Finland’s gross GHG emissions and ten times greater than the impact of the current LULUCF sector climate plan. It looks likely that Finland’s binding targets under the EU’s LULUCF Regulation for 2021-2025 are already impossible to reach given the deficit accumulating since 2021.
Conclusions: Keep on Banging on Every Door?
The outcome of Finnish Climate Case II offers a mixed legacy. On the one hand, it broadened access to justice and signaled to the Government that inaction could face legal consequences beyond the explicit provisions of the Climate Change Act. On the other hand, the Court’s highly deferential approach and limited scope of judicial scrutiny leave significant questions about holding the Government accountable.
The ruling is noteworthy both in Finland and internationally. Domestically, it highlights the contrast between Finland’s judicial approach and more progressive European climate rulings, providing interesting material for comparative analysis. Internationally, the case underscores the critical influence of national legal systems and traditions on climate litigation outcomes, demonstrating how courts, while engaging in cross-border dialogues, remain rooted in their domestic legal contexts and may resist influences that appear too far removed from those traditions.
Pressure on the Finnish Government is mounting. The crisis in Finland’s LULUCF sector is particularly alarming, as it not only jeopardises Finland’s climate neutrality target but also threatens the EU’s collective 2030 LULUCF goals. The Finnish National Audit Office’s forthcoming evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of the Government’s climate policies could further amplify calls for urgent action in the LULUCF sector, where reducing emissions is comparatively more cost-effective than in most other sectors.
If the Government fails to respond decisively, a third Finnish climate case — and potentially infringement proceedings under EU law — appears likely. NGOs, frustrated with the lack of national progress, could also raise the matter to the ECtHR. Among the coalition behind Finnish Climate Case II, Greenpeace and Amnesty are particularly well-positioned to pursue further litigation. Greenpeace has supported landmark cases like KlimaSeniorinnen, and Amnesty’s human rights advocacy aligns with the KlimaSeniorinnen criteria for standing.
However, the lengthy timelines of legal processes risk rendering even successful challenges too late to protect Finland’s climate neutrality target and the EU LULUCF targets. Achieving these goals now depends on whether the Government can respond swiftly and decisively to the mounting scrutiny. While the Court placed its faith in the Government, for others, that trust is currently far harder to extend.
In line with research ethics, the authors disclose their connections to the case. Martin Björklund, Otto Bruun, Vilja Johasson, Maiju Mähönen, and Milka Sormunen are academics who supported the NGOs in preparing Finnish Climate Cases I and II. Laura Kolehmainen serves as a legal adviser to the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, one of the applicant organizations. Kati Kulovesi supported the applicant NGOs in Finnish Climate Case I.
Kati Kulovesi is Professor of International law at the University of Eastern Finland, where she co-directs the Center for Climate Change, Energy and Environmental Law (CCEEL). She is Principle Investigator of the 2035Legitimacy project.
Martin Björklund teaches domestic public and administrative law at the Swedish School of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki.
Otto Bruun works as a PhD researcher at the CCEEL. His research focuses on property in sustainability transformations, particularly in the context of land use and climate policies.
Laura Kolehmainen works as a legal adviser to the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation. Her role covers advising applicants in local environmental disputes and administrative processes, as well as counseling in environmental strategic litigation cases.
Vilja Johansson works as a PhD researcher at CCEEL. Her research focuses on the evolving legal concept of just transition, including in international, European and comparative law.
Maiju Mähönen works as a PhD researcher at CCEEL. Her PhD focuses on access to justice in climate matters under EU law, in addition to which she has studied the reform of Finland’s Climate Change Act.
Milka Sormunen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki. Her work focuses on human rights law, European law and constitutional law.