This paper analyses current issues regarding the environmental impact assessment procedure (hereinafter: EIA). The author analyses the legal nature of the decisions made in the EIA procedure and points out the problems which in practice raise the question of whether an EIA should be organized as three independent administrative proceedings or as one comprehensive procedure. In answering the question of whether the appeal is an effective legal remedy in the EIA procedure, special attention was paid to the analysis of the practice of the Administrative Court and the Constitutional Court of Serbia. In the concluding observations, the author points out preconditions for the establishment of a new EIA system.

This paper analyzes the results of application and protection of the right of access to information on climate change achieved thus far. The paper aims to point out the basis of the legal nature of information on climate change in international law and environmental acquis. It determines if the legal framework regulating the right of access to environmental information in Serbia can be applied to access to information on climate change. The final section suggests possible means to overcome the shortcomings found in domestic and comparative law.

Teaching environmental law and climate change issues one may open a number of questions on relations between environmental protection, governmental duties and public rights, starting with: has a government duty to care and maintain a dissent environment and stable climate conditions?; what is a ground for governmental decision-making on actions threatening sustainability of the climate conditions?; where is the beginning and the end of the responsibility of an individual or of an country? The article outlines the elements that provide the criteria under which one may discus on whether it should be the court to force the government to act or should it be a parliament to set laws initiating actions to protect citizens and their human rights from irreversible climate change? The article points out the recent cases State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation (court decision from December 2019) and Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. USA (court decision from January 2020). In Urgenda, the court concerned questions: whether the Netherlands is obliged to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases from its soil by at least 25% by the end of 2020 compared to 1990, whether the court can order the State to do so and whether the government is bound to protect human rights in climate crisis? In Juliana, a group of children between the ages of eight and nineteen filed suit against the federal government, claiming that the government violated their constitutional rights by causing dangerous carbon dioxide concentrations. Although the court had found the injury and evidence on causation between government's actions and climate crisis, it found a lack of redressability. The aim of the article is to examine if the concepts of European Green Deal presented on January 2019 by the Von der Leyen Commission to enshrine the 2050 climate neutrality target into life are in line with conclusions from analysed cases and lessons learned from COVID-19 crisis. * The paper is result of research activities under Jean Monnet Chair in European Environmental Law organized with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union EU AND COMPARATIVE LAW ISSUES AND CHALLENGES SERIES (ECLIC) -ISSUE 4

In the wake of crises and “enlargement fatigue”, EU politics deprioritized enlargement. Recently, however, the Commission motioned a reinvigorated enlargement prospect for the Western Balkans, identifying Serbia and Montenegro as the front runners. This paper advises that in going forward, the EU should also look back at its five decades of enlargement. The article focuses on environmental protection – a key EU public policy – and the way in which it features in the ever-evolving accession conditions and accession acts. It emerges that environmental protection has been marginalized throughout EU’s enlargement history. Taking Serbia as a case study, it is shown that this is highly problematic, since environmental protection is linked to safeguarding the rule of law – an essential criterion for EU membership. The role of environmental protection in the EU’s enlargement policies should thus be reprioritized.

No abstract