The ruling said public authorities have a duty to consider the cumulative pollution that people are exposed to. Today, the court ruled that derogations to pollute above legal limits cannot be granted in areas that are already significantly polluted. The case was escalated all the way to the EU’s top court. In a case brought by Bulgarian environmental organisations Greenpeace Bulgaria and Za Zemiata, with support from ClientEarth, environmental lawyers asked the Bulgarian court to revisit the decision, given the plant’s outsized impact on the region’s air pollution. The derogation gave the coal plant’s operators indefinite permission to emit almost double the amount of sulphur dioxide (SO2) allowed by EU law, to the detriment of the lives and wellbeing of people in the surrounding area. Environmental lawyers say this ruling will have ripple effects in coal-heavy regions with high levels of air pollution.Īt the end of 2018, the Bulgarian government granted the state-owned Maritsa East 2 coal plant a derogation so that the plant could burn more coal. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) today ruled that the Bulgarian government violated the law when it gave the biggest coal plant in the Balkans permission to pollute beyond EU legal limits. Press release: 9 March 2023 EU Court ruling “watershed moment” for coal-heavy regions
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