In Europe, superficial policy over systemic answers
On 14 May, the Council of Europe adopted the Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law, a treaty designed to help countries prosecute serious, cross-border environmental crimes. Hailed as a breakthrough by its drafters, the treaty establishes long-overdue tools to punish polluters and environmental offenders. But conspicuously absent from the final text is a legally binding recognition of the right to a healthy environment—something already enshrined in regional systems elsewhere in the world, from Latin America to Africa.
By failing to enshrine the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment in its new environmental crime treaty, the Council has exposed a familiar flaw in European policymaking: a preference for soft, technical instruments over clear, enforceable rights. Even as environmental threats grow more acute, institutions continue to prioritise legal frameworks that are either too narrow or too weak to meet the moment.
This omission wasn’t accidental. Despite calls from parliamentarians, legal experts and civil society groups, a small group of governments opposed any move to codify such a right. The result is a treaty that tackles some symptoms of environmental harm, but avoids addressing its underlying causes, or empowering those most affected. Europe remains the only continent without regional legal recognition of the right to a healthy environment, a bizarre oversight for a region that places a strong emphasis on health and the environment.
Yet the consequences are real. Environmental harm doesn’t occur in the abstract—it contaminates water sources, pollutes air, destroys ecosystems, and deepens existing inequalities. Without a legal foundation to protect environmental rights, individuals and communities lack standing when they are harmed. Governments face no obligation to act preventively. And the most vulnerable—those living near industrial sites or in already degraded landscapes—remain unprotected.
This tendency to favour procedural mechanisms over substantive rights isn’t unique to environmental law. On the contrary, it reflects a broader pattern in Brussels policymaking, partially resulting from the institutional imperative for brokering compromise among 27, often differing, opinions.
Another example of such policy-making in the public health segment is Nutri-Score, a front-of-package nutrition label pushed by Paris for EU-wide adoption. The system claimed to help consumers make healthier choices by assigning products a score from green-A to red-E. But the algorithm behind it was simplistic and flawed, which penalised traditional foods like olive oil, cheese, and cured meats while ignoring broader dietary and cultural contexts. The scheme lost credibility, and political momentum followed. The Commission ultimately backed away from its harmonisation plans in the face of growing EU-wide opposition and shifts in political priorities.
But that wasn’t the end. In the absence of formal regulation, private actors stepped in. Carrefour, one of Europe’s largest retailers, recently announced it will begin publishing Nutri-Scores for more than 550 supplier products, regardless of whether producers approve. A policy once promoted by the EU, then effectively abandoned, is now being enforced through supermarket procurement decisions. Scientific concerns and political backlash notwithstanding, the algorithm continues to shape consumer behaviour and penalise producers without public debate or accountability.
Nutri-Score is not an isolated case. It is symptomatic of a policymaking style that favours light-touch, headline-ready initiatives over deeper structural reform. It’s easier to promote a colour-coded label than to address food system inequalities. Just as it’s easier to criminalise extreme polluters than to recognise and legislate for every citizen’s right to live in a healthy environment.
The new environmental treaty follows this same logic. It introduces tools to punish the worst offences, but fails to confront the broader governance failures that allow environmental harms to persist. There is no provision for access to justice, no mechanism to hold states accountable for regulatory backsliding, and no guarantee of protection for those most exposed to degradation. It is a step forward that is taken sideways.
Europe is facing a triple crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. These threats are no longer theoretical. They are already reshaping lives and landscapes, from droughts and wildfires to poisoned rivers and collapsing ecosystems. If Europe wants to lead credibly on environmental protection, it needs more than frameworks. It needs legal foundations.
Codifying the right to a healthy environment wouldn’t solve everything. But it would establish a baseline obligation—to prevent harm, protect public goods, and ensure access to justice when those obligations fail. It would give citizens the legal means to act, and governments the legal responsibility to respond. It would also prevent the kind of drift we’ve seen with Nutri-Score: where weak, ill-conceived frameworks collapse institutionally but survive commercially, reshaping markets without democratic consent or scientific backing.
The Council of Europe still has the opportunity to shift course. Opening negotiations for a protocol on environmental rights under the European Convention on Human Rights would be a necessary, concrete step. Not a gesture, but a commitment—to move beyond procedural ambition and finally begin legislating for the protections people need.
Photo by John Olan o‘Non Unsplash