The European Union and the Regulation of the Environmental Risk Involved in Climate Change.

摘要

Since 1850, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been increasing at an extremely rapid rate as a result of anthropogenic activity, and, now, both humanity and nature are facing serious challenges in dealing with the negative environmental impacts resulting from climate change. For this reason, transnational environmental law, which requires that all law -- national, international, or mixed -- regulate actions that transcend national boarders, must foresee the environmental risk involved in the drastic changes that are forthcoming to the global biosphere and meet them with adequate transnational law.;I will argue, using the United Kingdom and Hungary as two case studies, that the enlargement of the European Union to include Central and Eastern European states will allow for more adequate regulation of environmental risk due to climate change. The codification of the principle of subsidiarity in Article 5 of the Treaty establishing the European Community allows for EU law to prevail over municipal law which can more effectively recognize climate change as an environmental risk problem with consideration for an ecosystem approach to law and policy through the application of the Precautionary Principle, which is already part of EU law. Additionally, the EU allows for Member States to attain a successful dialectic synthesis of economic prosperity and ecosystem functioning.