<i>ClientEarth and Collectif Nourrir v Commission</i> : The French Strategic Plan for the Common Agricultural Policy under scrutiny

Abstract This case note analyses the General Court's ruling in ClientEarth and Collectif Nourrir v Commission , a landmark judgment on the European Commission's approval of the French Strategic Plan for the use of EU funds under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The Court held that the French Plan did not meet the CAP Strategic Plans Regulation's minimum requirements on crop rotation and annulled the Commission's decision to reject the NGOs' request for internal review of its approval decision. It is the first judgment in which civil society organisations successfully challenged an EU institution under the revised Aarhus Regulation on the basis of non‐compliance with environmental law. The judgment is, however, ambivalent. While the Court ruled in favour of the NGOs on crop rotation, it rejected broader complaints on environmental and climate ambition because the Commission's powers of scrutiny over the Plan were limited. This note highlights two risks for effective environmental protection revealed by the court ruling. First, renationalisation can undermine environmental protection if not counterbalanced by sufficient Commission scrutiny powers. Unless the Commission is empowered to scrutinise whether the level of ambition is commensurate to the environmental and climate challenges, Member States have an incentive to set low environmental targets so that they can easily achieve them. Second, the judgment also underscores the limits of the siloed approach to environmental protection followed in the CAP Strategic Plans Regulation. Given that the environmental and climate architecture of the Plans remains distinct from socio‐economic instruments, the latter risk undermining the former. Instead, it is argued that flexibility to adapt to national circumstances needs to be combined with sufficient Commission scrutiny powers and a clear EU‐wide direction of travel on environmental protection across all CAP interventions. This would benefit both the environment and the maintenance of a level‐playing field across EU Member States.