Recommendation for a Council Decision authorising the opening of negotiations on a Global Pact for the Environment

Background and further information:

The development of a new instrument of international environmental law, aiming to complement and improve the coherence of international environmental law and to facilitate the implementation of existing obligations under international environmental law, has been initiated by an international group of legal experts with the support of the French government.

On 24 June 2017, a draft text of a "Global Pact for the Environment" was presented at Sorbonne University in Paris. The President of the French Republic committed on this occasion to introducing the project of the Pact to the United Nations General Assembly, and the project was presented to the United Nations on 19 September 2017, in the margins of the ministerial week of the General Assembly's 72nd session.

The main objectives of the Pact, as set out by its proponents, are:
- To include in a legally binding treaty the fundamental principles of environmental law, already included in universal political declarations, so as to make them enforceable before internal courts.
- To make universal the main provisions of legally binding conventions that are not universal.
- To add new principles, in view of new challenges – the draft text prepared by the lawyers includes, for example, principles of non-regression and resilience, as well as a duty of care for the environment.

The objective of this Recommendation is to obtain from the Council the authorisation for the Commission to negotiate the future Global Pact on behalf of the EU.

The European Commission on 19 March 2018 asked the Council for a mandate to negotiate an international Global Pact for the Environment on behalf of the European Union.