EMLA's focus is two fold. On the legal side, we focus on public participation and access to information in environmental matters. On the scientific side, we specialize in environmental impact assessment (EIA), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), systemic procedural changes, and the education of young environmentalists.

EMLA's legal staff provides pro bono legal services to the Hungarian public. This includes both legal advising and representation in the courts and administrative bodies. We commonly work with local groups to assist them in formally organizing themselves as grassroots environmental organizations. We often write studies and draft legislation for governmental bodies ranging from local to national (we are currently writing the environmental legislation for Bosnia). In all of our work, we promote the understanding, implementation, and practice of public participation in environmental decision making.

EMLA is made up of two branches: the Practical Branch and the Scientific Branch. The Practical, or legal branch, currently has three full-time attorneys. The Scientific Branch is led by one full-time Environmental Management Coordinator.

A major component of the Scientific Branch is a year-long multi-disciplinary student program focusing on an issue of environmental significance in Hungary (this year's student project is on the Tisza Lake in the aftermath of the cyanide spill on the Tisza River).

The other organizational entities of EMLA are the Members, the Board of Directors, and the Board of Trustees.

In 1992, Dr. Gyula Bándi, EMLA's current president and a professor of environmental law, and Peter Kellner, a Princeton University graduate and Fulbright Scholar in Hungary, teamed together to establish the Environmental Management and Law Association. EMLA's mission was the same as it is today: "to create and implement legal and management mechanisms to promote environmental reform and sound policy in a democratic, free market Hungary."

At that time, EMLA gathered together over eighty of Hungary's most prominent economists, lawyers, scientists, engineers, and journalists who were active in the environmental field as its professional membership. EMLA was to become a forum in which the members could deepen their already existing knowledge of environmental issues. EMLA would also function as the spring board from which the expertise of these environmental professionals be shared with a wider audience. Over the last eight years this audience has grown across the board to include many non-profits, NGO's, community groups, businesses, local, national, and supranational governments, and, of course, members of the general public.