LEGAL PROBLEMS IN DANISH EIA — THE OERESUND CASE

The court case concerning the establishment of a combined fixed-link between Copenhagen — the capital of Denmark — and Malmo (city) in Sweden has been pending in the Danish courts since early 1993. In December 1998, the Supreme Court in Denmark closed the case by deciding that the litigant, Greenpeace Denmark, was not supported in view that the parliamentary adoption of the project in 1991 was in conflict with the EC EIA Directive. The case was disappointing in failing to draw a line in the sand regarding legal requirements being met by all decision-makers in the nation, even the parliament. The article discusses the various legal requirements that may be extracted from the ambiguous wording of the exemption Article 1(5) in the EIA Directive and compares them to the realities of the decision-making procedures.