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The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Wednesday called for an ambitious new legal framework, both at national and European level, to anchor “the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment” and presented a draft of an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights which would make such a right enforceable in law in all countries which ratified it.

In a resolution and recommendation based on a report by Simon Moutquin (Belgium SOC), the Assembly said such a legal text would finally give the European Court of Human Rights “a non-disputable base for rulings concerning human rights violations arising from environment-related adverse impacts on human health, dignity and life”. The Assembly pointed out that around half the world’s countries have recognised such a “right to a healthy environment” in their constitutions, including 32 Council of Europe member States. Only Europe does not have a regional agreement or arrangement recognising such a right, it added.

The Assembly’s draft would now be considered by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers (CM), which has the final say on whether to draft a new protocol to the Convention. It took no action on a similar request from the Assembly in 2009.

The parliamentarians also recommended that the CM draw up an additional protocol to the European Social Charter on the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Furthermore, the preparation of a feasibility study for a “5P” (preventing, prosecuting, protecting, policies, parliaments) convention on environmental threats and technological hazards threatening human health, dignity and life should be launched, they said, and Recommendation CM/Rec(2016)3 on human rights and business revised with a view to strengthening corporate environmental responsibility.