25 April 2025. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe will adopt its new Strategy on the Environment during its Ministerial meeting on 13 and 14 May 2025.
The document is the outcome of an "ad hoc multidisciplinary group" aimed at finding new ways for the Council to protect human rights in the face of the triple planetary crisis of pollution, climate breakdown, and biodiversity loss.
As an organisation with participatory status in the Council, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) was one of the active contributors to the Strategy’s development, together with other members of the Coalition for the Right to a Healthy Environment at the Council of Europe.
The organisations ensured that the strategy enshrined a commitment to "strengthening work on human rights and the environment". They also secured language on children and young people’s rights; the human rights of future generations; the relevance of nature and ecosystem-based solutions; the recognition of the contribution of fuel production and consumption to the crises; and the need for measures to address all forms of discrimination.
However, this comprehensive strategy now requires a solid backbone: Member States must commit to protecting legally the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
The Coalition, composed of over 500 organisations including FIDH and more than 200 academics, has repeated it time and time again: an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights to protect the right to a healthy environment is crucial to meet the urgency of global environmental challenges. This recognition would be the real foundation for an ambitious and future-proof strategy that can secure the rights of citizens and environmental defenders across Europe.
The Committee of Ministers will meet in Luxembourg in May to finally adopt the Strategy and the accompanying Action Plan to implement it, and decide what step to take regarding the protection of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
FIDH expresses its hope that the heads of government will heed the collective call and decide to start negotiations for a legally binding instrument, restoring the Council of Europe’s leadership on the most pressing human rights challenge of our times.