North East Pylon Pressure Campaign Limited and Maura Sheehy v An Bord Pleanála and Others.
Date: 2018-03-15
30


As the Court has already held, the requirement laid down in Article 11(4) of Directive 2011/92 concerns all the costs arising from participation in the judicial proceedings. The prohibitive nature of costs must therefore be assessed as a whole, taking into account all the costs borne by the party concerned (see, to that effect, judgment of 11 April 2013, Edwards and Pallikaropoulos, C‑260/11, EU:C:2013:221, paragraphs 27 and 28).
46


It should be borne in mind that the Court of Justice has jurisdiction to give preliminary rulings concerning the interpretation of the Aarhus Convention, which was signed by the Community and subsequently approved by Decision 2005/370, and the provisions of which therefore form an integral part of the EU legal order (judgment of 8 March 2011, Lesoochranárske zoskupenie, C‑240/09, EU:C:2011:125, paragraph 30).
50


Moreover, as the Court has repeatedly held, where a provision of EU law can apply both to situations falling within the scope of national law and to situations falling within the scope of EU law, it is clearly in the European Union’s interest that, in order to forestall future differences of interpretation, that provision should be given a uniform interpretation irrespective of the circumstances in which it is to be applied (judgment of 8 March 2011, Lesoochranárske zoskupenie, C‑240/09, EU:C:2011:125, paragraph 42 and the case-law cited).
52


As regards the inferences that the national court should draw from that conclusion, it should be borne in mind that neither paragraph 3 nor paragraph 4 of Article 9 of the Aarhus Convention contains any unconditional and sufficiently precise obligation capable of directly regulating the legal position of individuals (see, to that effect, judgments of 8 March 2011, Lesoochranárske zoskupenie, C‑240/09, EU:C:2011:125, paragraph 45, and of 28 July 2016, Ordre des barreaux francophones et germanophone and Others, C‑543/14, EU:C:2016:605, paragraph 50).
54


In the absence of EU legislation on the detailed procedural rules governing actions for safeguarding rights which individuals derive from EU law, it is for the domestic legal system of each Member State to lay down those rules and to ensure that those rights are effectively protected in each case (see, inter alia, by analogy, judgment of 8 March 2011, Lesoochranárske zoskupenie, C‑240/09, EU:C:2011:125, paragraph 47).
55


On that basis, as is apparent from well-established case-law, the detailed procedural rules governing actions for safeguarding an individual’s rights under EU law must be no less favourable than those governing similar domestic actions (principle of equivalence) and must not make it in practice impossible or excessively difficult to exercise rights conferred by EU law (principle of effectiveness) (see, inter alia, judgment of 15 April 2008, Impact, C‑268/06, EU:C:2008:223, paragraph 46).
56


Therefore, if the effective protection of EU environmental law, in this case Directive 2011/92 and Regulation No 347/2013, is not to be undermined, it is inconceivable that Article 9(3) and (4) of the Aarhus Convention be interpreted in such a way as to make it in practice impossible or excessively difficult to exercise rights conferred by EU law (see, by analogy, judgment of 8 March 2011, Lesoochranárske zoskupenie, C‑240/09, EU:C:2011:125, paragraph 49).
58


It follows from the foregoing that the answer to the fourth and fifth questions is that Article 9(3) and (4) of the Aarhus Convention must be interpreted as meaning that, in order to ensure effective judicial protection in the fields covered by EU environmental law, the requirement that certain judicial procedures not be prohibitively expensive applies to the part of a challenge that would not be covered by that requirement, as it results, under Directive 2011/92, from the answer given to the second question, in so far as the applicant seeks, by that challenge, to ensure that national environmental law is complied with. Those provisions do not have direct effect, but it is for the national court to give an interpretation of national procedural law which, to the fullest extent possible, is consistent with them.
60


It must, in that regard, be recalled that the requirement that certain judicial procedures not be prohibitively expensive laid down in both Article 11(4) of Directive 2011/92 and Article 9(4) of the Aarhus Convention in no way prevents national courts from ordering an applicant to pay costs. That follows expressly from the Aarhus Convention, with which EU legislation must be properly aligned, since Article 3(8) of that Convention states that the powers of national courts to award reasonable costs in judicial proceedings are not to be affected (see, by analogy, judgment of 11 April 2013, Edwards and Pallikaropoulos, C‑260/11, EU:C:2013:221, paragraphs 25 and 26).