14 May 2025. Today in Luxembourg, the Council of Europe’s 46 member states postponed the decision to start negotiations to legally protect the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
Limiting the ambition of their work on the environment, Ministers gathered for their session only instructed their deputies to "move forward as quickly as possible in their consideration of a possible binding or non-binding instrument in this field".
Maddalena Neglia, Director of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)’s Business, Human Rights and Environment Desk, said:
"Ministers lost yet another opportunity to move past simple political statements and fulfil the call by parliamentarians, academics, and hundreds of civil society organisations across Europe to act decisively to legally protect the right to a healthy environment.
The European human rights system remains the only one not to protect the right, even though its members have already unanimously supported its recognition at the United Nations General Assembly. Meanwhile, the mounting effects of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss and pollution endanger citizens’ lives and dignity across the continent.
Waiting is not an option in the face of such an unprecedented human rights crisis. The Council of Europe must promptly begin negotiations for an additional protocol on this right under the European Convention on Human Rights. We count on the leadership of states like France, Slovenia and Portugal so that the Council no longer lags behind, but rather meets the challenge of our times."