The right to environmental information in EU legislation

Abstract

The right to environmental information is one of the fundamental environmental rights. Moreover, timely, complete and reliable information about the state of the environment is a prerequisite for the proper implementation of other environmental rights, and the objectivity and availability of environmental information is a guarantee of the effective functioning of the mechanism for ensuring environmental safety.
Today, the right to environmental information finds its normative consolidation in acts of international, European and national legislation. Undoubtedly, each of these levels of legal regulation is in a mutually determined relationship, is based on a commonly recognized approach and is oriented towards the formation of unified policies and practices of states in the implementation of environmental information provision and management in the field of environmental protection in general.
The purpose of this article is to consider the prerequisites for enshrining the right to environmental information in EU legislation, to analyze its place in European legal acts, to clarify their meaning and impact on the environmental legislation of Ukraine.
The article concludes that the EU is an active participant in international environmental policy, which is confirmed by the fact that it has signed a number of conventions aimed at solving issues of transboundary significance, as well as the result of implementing the provisions of these documents into its domestic legislation. EU member states are parties to the Aarhus Convention and the EU itself implemented its principles in founding treaties and secondary law norms. The basic EU document in the field of environmental information provision is Directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 28 January 2003 on public access to environmental information and repealing Council Directive 90/313/EEC. At the same time, the main principles and procedure for regulating environmental information relations in the EU are also defined in other acts of its internal legislation, directly related to Directive 2003/4/EC, and elements of the mechanisms of environmental information provision are also indirectly found in the norms of secondary EU law, which concern other issues of environmental protection or its separate components.