Legal means of protection against abuse of the right of public participation in the decision-making process in environmental matters – current situation in the Slovak Republic

Abstract

The Aarhus Convention guarantees several procedural rights which the concerned public can actively use as long as it is involved in the environmental impact assessment procedure. This international treaty assumes that the affected public uses its procedural rights with the intention of ensuring the protection of the environment. In practice, however, this may not be the case. Using a specific example from Slovakia, the author points to a case where there was a suspicion that a non-governmental organization was using its subjective rights pursuing a goal other than it is required by the Aarhus Convention. The administrative authorities believed that such behavior could be an abuse of the procedural rights guaranteed by the Convention and therefore they sought legal tools within the administrative law, the use of which would not be in conflict with the Aarhus Convention. This article addresses the issue of legal limits that prevent parties from restricting the procedural rights of the concerned public guaranteed by the Aarhus Convention.

Keywords

• Aarhus Convention
• procedural rights of the public
• abuse of law