Book Review: Manual of European Environmental Law
| Author | David Grimeaud |
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X9900600407 |
| Published date | 01 December 1999 |
| Date | 01 December 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Reviews
Al exan dre K iss a nd Dina h She lton , Manual o f European Environmental
Law, Se con d e dit ion , Camb ridge U niv ersi ty Pres s 199 7, x liii + 62 2
pa ge s, ha rdbac k.
Environmental protection ranks among the top priorities on the European political
agenda. Indeed, the European environment is being continuou sly degraded as a result
of unsustainable economic, indust rial and consumption p atterns and deficient policy
responses. Against such a background the European Community has adopted, for more
than two decades, far-reaching and continuously evolving environmental policy and
legislation which is binding on Member States. Alongside these western European policy
and legal developments, o ther European countries, including Eastern and Central
European States, and in particular those countries which are close to accession to the
European Community such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, have also
started to implement ambitious environmental legislation at the national level. In
addition, environmental questions are increasingly becoming o f importance at the
inter national leve l. One can poin t to re cent inter national e nvironment al law
developments in the field of, for example, climate change and Genetically Modified
Organisms, which inevitably affect European and national environmental law.
This revised manual seeks to p rovide an overview of bo th common and contras ting
approaches to environmental matters espoused by the European Community and
European States individually , as well as by the international community as a whole.
This is undoubtedly achieved through a clear structure whereby each chapter, dealing
with a specific environmental subject-matter, contains a detailed introductory analysis
of the relevant international, European Community and national environmental legal
sources. The reader is th en able to become more aware of the interactions between
those legal elements and consequent policy and legislative outcomes. In addition, each
chapter contains relevant case-studies written by distinguished authors such as Professor
M. Prieur (Legal P rote ction o f th e Soi l, Chapter 7) and Dr. L. Krämer (Fresh Wa ter
an d EC L aw, Chapter 8 and The Eu ropea n C omm unity a nd At mos phe ric P oll utio n,
Chapter 10). Chapters also reproduce core provisions of in ternational, European and
national environmental policy-documents and legislation, including English transla tions
of Eastern and Central European countries’ environmental texts such as the 1991 Czech
Republic Act on the Environment (Chapter 1) and the 1995 Hungarian Act LIII on the
General Rules of Environmental Protection (Chapter 12), that may otherwise be difficult
to find. A useful and up-to-date bibliography and a set o f pertinen t questions and
problems conclude each chapter. These allow the reader to verify whether he or she has
comprehensively understood all o f the environmental issues dealt with. Thus, this
interesting mix of analytical sections, case-studies, materials and references in each
chapter makes it very easy for the reader to identify clearly th e various key
environmental issues and to make critical comparisons between legal systems operating
at differe nt levels.
414 6 MJ 4 (1999)
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