ABSTRACT

Environmental Toxic Torts in Europe: Trends in Recovery of Soil Clean-up Costs and Damages for Personal Injury in the Netherlands, Belgium, England and Germany

By Geritt Betlem and Michael Faure

In recent years environmental liability has been one of the most rapidly evolving areas of European tort law. This article examines recent developments in the Netherlands, Belgium, England and Germany in relation to environmental liability for soil clean-up costs. These four countries were chosen because they appear representative of the actions European states have taken to address the soil clean-up problem. This area has emerged as an important issue, as many European countries have begun to employ public law rather than private law mechanisms to establish environmental liability. Environmental pollution has spawned legislative action, as well as a growing body of case law in these European Systems. This comes as a result of policy makers increasing awareness that polluted sites gives rise to problems reaching far beyond the boundaries remedied by traditional tort law. Public law remedies, such as a remediation order under administrative law, allow the administrative authorities to circumvent the limitations of traditional tort law, by offering the right either to force a polluter to clean up the polluted site, or to do so at the polluters expense. In an effort to show that these countries are in fact representative of general trends in soil pollution liability in Europe as a whole, this article also considers the developments at the European Union and Council of Europe level.