Red Mud Pond in the village of Almásfüzitő

From today, once a month we will provide information on an ongoing case that we are managing on behalf of Greenpeace Hungary. GP Hungary had submitted a complaint to the European Commission in 2012 asking it to start an infringement procedure against Hungary. The reason was that a company has received a permit for waste management on the top of an unused red mud pond in the village of Almásfüzitő. According to GP's standpoint - which we fully share and support with our legal opinion - the permitted activity is contrary to domestic and EU environmental law in many respects. The case is at the EC right now, waiting for a decision. To facilitate decision-making, EMLA has submitted additional arguments to the EC lately, listing why we think that the case in question is not an exception but rather a part of a consistent and general administrative practice. Currently we are working on a paper that would uncover the environmental impacts.

How can NGOs support the Access to Justice Directive of the EU?

This week is fully dedicated to the AGM of Justice and Environment

The AGM of J&E is approaching

This year the Annual General Meeting of Justice and Environment is organized by EMLA. The event will be held in Hotel Arena in Budapest between 24 and 28 September.

Hungary decided to join OGP

In the fall of 2011, EMLA approached a few CSOs and suggested to turn jointly to the Government of Hungary to find out whether Hungary is willing to join the Open Government Partnership launched by President Obama.

Access to Nuclear Information

The Aarhus and Nuclear Roundtable of Hungary (Roundtable on promoting the implementation of the Aarhus Convention in nuclear decision-making) has finalized and adopted the protocol on access to environmental information. The application of the protocol by the members of the Roundtable is voluntary. Members of the Roundtable include the Hungarian Electricity Company, the Paks NPP, the Ministry of Rural Development and of National Development, the Atomic Energy Agency of Hungary, EMLA, Energy Club and previously the environmental and the data protection ombudsmen. The Protocol is available only in Hungarian.

Donation

Peter Kellner, founder of Richmond Global, Endeavor and EMLA Association has given a donation to the Assocation and to the EMLA Foundation. The amount received by the Assocation will be used for co-funding grant applications in order to increase the sustainability of our activities. The donation received by the Foundation will be used for developing and managing a new, practice oriented environmental educational programme. The preparation of the latter has started; further information can be found on the website and on the Facebook page of EMLA in due time.

EEB

Today EMLA became a member of EEB (European Envirionmental Bureau).

TAI 3D on UN website

The Access Initiative 3D (3 Demands) campaign is available on the official website of the UN dedicated to the 2012 Rio Summit.

TAI 3D

Hungary is the only European country taking part currently in the 3D campaign of TAI
The essence of the 3D (3 Demands) campaign of The Access Initiative is to formulate CSO demands towards governments in the preparatory process leading up to the 2012 Rio Summit. More information is available on the campaign and the Hungarian participation under the following link.

Legal service funded by the EU

Justice & Environment (J&E) European Network of Environmental Law Organizations receives operational funding from the European Union within its LIFE+ NGO Grants funding scheme for 2011. Part of this funding covers legal advice to citizens and civil society organizations in environmental matters. J&E performs this legal advice via legal experts who work at EMLA. We would like to inform our clients that part of the legal assistance EMLA is offering is actually provided by J&E and is funded by the European Union.

Environmental Law Conference

"The Public Interest Environmental Law Conference is the premier annual gathering for environmentalists worldwide, and is distinguished as the oldest and largest of its kind. The Conference historically unites more than 3,000 activists, attorneys, students, scientists, and concerned citizens from over 50 countries around the globe to share their experience and expertise.” (http://www.pielc.org/pages/about.html )
On the 6’th of March 2011 our staff member, dr. Szilvia Szilagyi has participated in the panel „Environmental Impact Assessments in Estonia, Hungary
and Slovakia, ELAW (Organized by Maggie Keenan)”.
The panel covered the topic of EIAs as it pertains to Estonia and Hungary. Each panelist discussed their public interest environmental law organization’s work; including Environmental Management and Law Association’s (Budapest) work on air and noise pollution, environmental conservation, and promoting good environmental regulation in local government.

EMLA References 2010

Climate Change and Law

EMLA Association has been involved in monitoring, researching and forming the regulation of climate change (mitigation and adaptation) for more than a half decade in Hungary. Under the below link you can find in English some of the outcomes of our project completed during 2008-2010. Hungarian language materials are available on EMLA’s Hungarian web page.

Presentations of the climate change-specific regulatory framework of five countries

Austria

Presentations of the climate change-specific regulatory framework of five countries

Czech Republic

Presentations of the climate change-specific regulatory framework of five countries

Estonia

Presentations of the climate change-specific regulatory framework of five countries

Hungary

Presentations of the climate change-specific regulatory framework of five countries

Slovenia

Implementation of the Water Framework Directive - an overview of the Hungarian, Croatian, Serbian and Slovenian situation.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) establishes a legal framework to protect and restore clean water across Europe and ensure its long-term, sustainable use.
The purpose of the directive is to establish a framework for the protection of inland surface waters, transitional waters, coastal waters and groundwater. The directive establishes an innovative approach for water management based on river basins, and sets specific deadlines for Member States to protect aquatic ecosystems.

J&E is against GMOs

Justice and Environment (J&E) (of which EMLA is a member) uses the available legal measures provided by the European environmental law and the Aarhus Convention to fight GMOs.

Access to Environmental Justice in the EU

In April, EMLA participated at a meeting held in Brno and organized by the Czech EU Presidency as part of its official program. Representatives of the Commission, the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee and the Czech Government as well as judges and NGO lawyers discussed the status of access to environmental justice in the EU. An English summary of the event can be found under the following link

Environmental governance and international development

From the beginning of 2008, European partner organizations of The Access Initiative (TAI) such as SEIT from Estonia, REC form Latvia, ECAT from Lithuania, IGO from Poland and EMLA from Hungary work together in a new project with colleagues from PILF from Sri Lanka, TEI from Thailand, LEAT from Tanzania, ACODE from Uganda and VACNE from Vietnam. The project is supported by expertise from HAND Alliance from Hungary.

The topic of the research is new for the members of TAI network, since NGOs involved in environmental governance and the implementation of environmental democracy so far analyze a related but distinct topic: conditionality in international development decision-making.

Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations (Ombudsman)

The Parliament of the Republic of Hungary has appointed dr. Sándor Fülöp, CEO of EMLA as Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations (Ombudsman) on 26 May 2008. We feel that the personal success of our colleague is the success of EMLA as well. We hope that it also means the acknowledgment of the role and values of EMLA represented to date. We congratulate Sándor and we wish him lots of success in his work!
EMLA Staff