Reducing the Judicial Deficit in Multilevel Environmental Regulation: the Example of Plant Protection Products

This article takes the regulation of plant protection products as an example in order to evaluate the impact of the Aarhus Convention in a multilevel regulatory context. The author first gives an overview of the decision-making procedures in this field and discusses two judgments by the European Courts (C-174/05 Stichting Zuid-Hollandse Milieufederatie v College voor de toelating van bestrijdingsmiddelen and Joined Cases T-236/04 and T-241/04, European Environmental Bureau, Stichting Natuur en Milieu v Commission) to demonstrate why the current judicial review procedure presents a judicial deficit. She then evaluates the reduction of the judicial deficit in this field by the implementation of the rules on judicial review of the Aarhus Convention into the European legal order.