Aims and Motivation

Germany is one of the countries where the court system works reliably. Environmental projects and laws are regularly subject of legal disputes and proceedings. Citizens, citizens’ initiatives and associations who want to protect the environment, the climate and the health of humans and animals in Germany and elsewhere repeatedly face however high hurdles when it comes to accessing the courts. Yet, it is clear, that courts can only review legislators, administration and government if cases actually reach the bench.

GLI aims to maintain and improve access to justice in Germany and Europe in the long term. To this end, we provide a platform for lawyers and organizations, work with and towards politicians and administration and suggest concrete areas for improvement. For us, this also includes work on corporate criminal law, model declaratory action and other options open in civil procedure.

GLI aims to promote the full implementation of the Aarhus Convention in Germany and the EU, and to strengthen the role of courts in environmental protection. We are committed to progressive legal development – for the benefit of civil society in Germany as a whole. Courts are an objective place, where objective law should also be allowed to be enforced, without hurdles and without fear.

Concrete cases and legal action against environmentally harmful and often also human rights violating projects or policies abroad very often have a connection to Germany – to companies based in Germany, German products, money or government policy. This also applies to the EU. Current and planned cases in countries of the global South or elsewhere are rarely taken up in the German public. We want to support environmental cases, support them from our own legal system and reinforce their demands in public and in existing campaigns. To this end, GLI will support lawyers around the world through international cooperation and help networked and active environmental and grassroots lawyers (as resources allow) when those lawyers seek access to justice through EU mechanisms and law.

In legal education, strategic thinking and the practice of arguments at the margins of existing law, especially in the intersection of international law, human rights and EU law, are given far too little attention. It is precisely the task of the younger generation of lawyers to develop the law in the direction of sustainability and greenhouse gas neutrality as well as the preservation of civil rights for civil society engagement. GLI wants to offer a permanent education program with regular “Green Legal Labs” and thus close this gap.