The academic staff of the Jean Monnet Module in European and International Environmental Law (EIEL) is pleased to announce its second EIEL webinar, which will take place on January 15, 2021 at 2pm Central European Time (14.00).
For this second session of the 2020/2021 EIEL Webinar Series, we will welcome Dr Leonie Reins, Assistant Professor at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT), Tilburg University. Her online presentation will examine the interpretation of the “environmental guarantee” set in Article 193 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and its potential for providing effective protection of the objectives of EU environmental policy.
In order to ensure a high level of environmental protection and the preservation, protection and improvement of quality of the environment, the “environmental guarantee” enables EU Member States to unilaterally maintain or introduce “more stringent protective measures” beyond environmental measures adopted at the EU level under Article 192 TFEU. However, her analysis of case law shows that the need to develop EU environmental law as a coherent body of law, which is preserved by the CJEU, implies that some constraints are put on the ability of EU Member States to act more protectively than EU environmental law through Article 193. This seems to align with the intention of the drafters of the environmental guarantee, as introduced by the European Single Act, but what are the implications for the achievement of the objectives of the Union environmental policy?
Dr Leonie Reins joined Tilburg Law School as an Assistant Professor at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT). Prior to joining TILT, she worked as a PhD Candidate and then as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium). Her research project on “the coherent regulation on energy and environment – using shale gas as a case study”, was financed by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). In addition Leonie worked as Legal Advisor at a Brussels-based environmental law and policy consultancy, where she was involved in projects relating to environmental, energy and climate change law and policy. Leonie holds and LL.M. in International, European and Comparative Energy and Environmental Law. She has been part of, and managed, several complex multi-country legal and policy studies for the European Institutions.
These projects dealt with a range of topics, such as the precautionary principle and risk management, unconventional gas and environmental claims. Leonie’s work has been published in leading journals, such as Environmental Liability and the Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law. Her 2017 monograph on the regulation of shale gas, Regulating shale gas: The challenge of coherent environmental and energy regulation, was published with Edward Elgar. In 2017, she co-authored the volume EU Environmental Law (Edward Elgar) with Prof Geert van Calster.
The webinar will be streamed below or at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rovL5nVWV0E.
The slides prepared by Dr Reins are available here: https://eieljeanmonnet.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/leonie-reins_-where-eagles-dare.pdf.
EIEL 