ABSTRACT
The article aims to identify the limits of European law and the challenges of conflict of laws that arise in relation to civil climate change litigation. The legal dispute pending in the Netherlands between Vereniging Milieudefensie and Shell and the global order initially issued by the Rechtbank Den Haag requiring CO₂ reduction play a particularly important role as examples. In a preliminary section, the article outlines the political implications of such lawsuits and the difficulties that arise from them. In particular, it addresses the structural framework conditions and limits of judicial decision-making. From a European legal perspective, the article then examines the limits arising from the freedoms of the internal market, namely for trade in goods (both freedom of import and export) and the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of nationality. Questions about the existence of an interference are also addressed. Finally, the article deals with the complexity that arises in such cases from conflict of law issues. In particular, the article takes a critical view of cross-border injunctions.
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Thomas Pfeiffer, Civil Climate Change Litigation Between Law and Politics Limited Scope Rather Than Unlimited Interpretation, European Review of Private Law, volume 33, issue 5/6, pp 979-1004 (2025).
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