Date: 1996
Type: Article
Litigation by public-interest groups in European law
German yearbook of international law, 1996, Vol. 39, pp. 361-387
GADING, Heike, Litigation by public-interest groups in European law, German yearbook of international law, 1996, Vol. 39, pp. 361-387
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/76895
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
The judicial protection of individual human rights is well established in the European Union. In contrast, the protection of public interests through access to the courts in European law is not well developed. Such cases may concern consumers, future generations or the environment. One way to protect public interests is litigation by public-interest groups. It may be possible in many cases concerning public interests to find an individual with standing. If such an individual's suit can be expected to lead to a decision of strategic importance, there is no problem for an interest group to treat such a case as a 'test case', thereby providing expert counsel and controlling the conduct of the case in all material aspects. But there are situations in which such a solution cannot be achieved. The individual with standing to sue may exist, but he or she may be unwilling to do so for plausible reasons such as lack of money, lack of linguistic or other skills or lack of understanding of complex facts and intricate law, which cannot be solved by the support of relevant interest groups. Or there may be simply no individual that would qualify as a plaintiff under the law of standing, because the interest at stake does not belong to an individual but rather to the public.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/76895
ISSN: 0344-3094; 2195-7304
Publisher: Duncker & Humblot
Earlier different version: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/5513
Version: The article is based on the author’s EUI LLM thesis, 1996
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