EU Marine Environmental Law: 

Building a Safe Haven for Marine Life or Getting Lost at the Sea? 

European seas host an immense variety of life and play an important role in climate regulation and creating economic opportunities. Yet, it is only during recent decades that the European Union has gradually established a comprehensive legislative approach to protecting the marine environment. The 2008 Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) puts forward ambitious legal objectives – achieving good status of the marine environment – and provides integrated marine strategies as the main instrument for steering towards those objectives. To date, the effectiveness of the MSFD has however been rather low, as its implementation has produced strategies and plans on paper but failed to establish strong substantive legal obligations on Member States and individuals for addressing sources of degradation. At the same time, some core pieces of EU environmental legislation – most notably nature protection law – have remained shallow in their application in the marine sphere. The lecture describes the development of EU marine environmental legislation and examines its key strengths and weaknesses in protecting the marine environment.

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Speaker

Suvi-Tuuli Puharinen

 She is an Assistant Professor of European law, particularly environmental law, at Maastricht University. Her research deals particularly with topics of water and marine environmental protection, biodiversity and corporate sustainability due diligence related to water. She defended her doctoral dissertation titled ‘Normative Environmental Quality as a Regulatory Strategy in EU Environmental law: Legal Implications of Water Status Objectives’ in June 2024 at the University of Eastern Finland. In her research, she is particularly interested in how the legal systems’ structures, limitations and principles deriving from outside the field of environmental law affect the effectiveness of (EU) environmental law in steering towards the achievement of environmental objectives.

Environmental Law Lecture Series

This lecture is part of the Environmental Law Lecture Series: Strengthening EU Environmental Law, Legal Perspectives on Greening Europe series. This series provides a set of important insights from environmental law scholars on how EU environmental law helps to achieve the aim of a high level of environmental protection in the European Union and across the world.

With the European Green Deal from 11 December 2019 the European Commission tabled an ambitious legislative program, based on fundamental aims such as zero pollution, do no harm, and climate neutrality. Many legal developments took place and are still ongoing, both at the European and national regulatory levels as in the courtroom, including the national courts. While efforts to protect the environment are direly needed, including effective implementation and enforcement, the regulatory acquis, and the flow of case law, has become utterly complex which poses challenges for acquiring a good understanding and application.

This freely accessible online (and hybrid) lecture series provides students and scholars with core insights into the state of affairs and further improvement of EU environmental law. The lecture series will run in 2023 and 2024. All lectures will be recorded and will be made accessible through our YouTube channel.

This GreenDeal-Net lecture series is hosted by MCEL, METRO and organised in cooperation with GLaw-Net and GreenDeal-NET. Maastricht University students will be eligible for certificates of attendance (see more information under the registration link).