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Environmental law
1. Introduction
Danish environmental law is an extremely complicated area and the regulations include more than 500 Acts and Statutory Orders plus almost 300 ministerial guidance notes. Moreover, Danish environmental law consists of a mixture of public and civil law.
In administrative terms, the environmental area comes within the sphere of the Danish Ministry of the Environment. The Ministry has four agencies, one corporate management centre and seven independent environment centres.
The agencies are the following:
- the Environmental Protection Agency,which is in charge of eg pesticides, gene technology, chemicals, soil and waste;
- the Forest and Nature Agency,which is in charge of eg nature, flora and fauna, timber procurement and the Danish EU-LIFE projects;
- the Agency for Spatial and Environmental Planning,which is in charge primarily of planning and land use as well as geology – environment and earth resources;
- the National Survey and Cadastre,which is in charge of eg topographic data, nautical charts and the Cadastre.
The authority to make specific day-to-day regulations relating to businesses, planning regulation, waste management, etc is to a wide extent left to the municipalities.
In many cases, municipal decisions are appealable to independent administrative boards, in particular the Environmental Board of Appeal or the Nature Protection Board of Appeal. Furthermore, all administrative decisions may be brought before the courts. Within the field of environmental law, it is worth noting that time limits are, as a rule, relatively short as regards both administrative appeals and bringing issues before the courts.
