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This chapter assesses the role for environmental liability in the context of the GMOs, with emphasis on the provisions of the Community Environmental Liability Directive. It commences with discussion of the role of liability regimes more generally (adopting Coasean analysis) and compares and contrasts the Environmental Liability Directive with the Lugano Convention. The application of the Environmental Liability Directive is then considered in detail, with particular attention devoted to: the definition of environmental damage, the basis of liability (whether strict or grounded upon fault), the use of the administrative liability model, and risk allocation and insurance. The chapter concludes that the Community regime has serious limitations. Not least, its territorial application is largely restricted to the Natura 2000 network of protected wildlife sites, where GM crop cultivation is in practice unlikely to occur.

This chapter provides the necessary theoretical justification to the study. It highlights the shortcomings of traditional legal solutions to ensure the environmentally sound conduct of private companies through home and host State control, international State responsibility, and international environmental regimes for civil liability. Corporate environmental accountability is therefore presented as an immediate way—additional to traditional legal solutions (such as home and host State control, international State responsibility, and international civil liability regimes)—to contribute to equalizing the international protection afforded to foreign direct investment and multinational companies with expectations of reasonably acceptable environmental conduct.

Chapter 5 examines the role of focal points as mechanisms of information provision by analyzing a series of legislative proposals as case studies. It draws on interviews with EU officials and the statistical analysis of individual final votes on the EP floor. This chapter illustrates how focal points shape EP policy-making processes and outcomes. While Chapter 3 demonstrates that the policy positions of expert legislators determine the positions of their nonexpert colleagues on the EP floor, Chapter 5 shows how this process takes place for invested nonexpert legislators. The legislative proposals analyzed concern EU takeover legislation, the statute and financing of EU-level political parties, proposals on fuel quality and motor vehicle emissions, liability for environmental damage, the liberalization of port services in the EU, and EU citizenship and the free movement of people.

This chapter deals with compensation for environmental damage under the legal systems of the Nordic countries and Germany. It covers the main general laws on (civil) environmental impairment liability. It discusses the characteristics of the liability systems, the notion of environmental damage, and reparation for environmental damage.

This chapter examines the Polish system of environmental liability and evaluation of damage. It argues that the Polish system is both confusing and rigid. Some of the confusion stems from the unclear system of liability of environmental damage which encompasses different branches of law. The lack of clear division between these types of liability influences evaluation.

In February 2000, the European Commission issued a White Paper on Environmental Liability, which outlines the views of the Commission on some of the key elements needed for an effective and practicable EU-wide environmental liability regime. This chapter focuses on liability for damage to natural resources. It explores how some of the more complex and controversial issues, such as the assessment of damages for injury to natural resources, are being resolved in the White Paper.

The powers of liquidators and trustees in bankruptcy to disclaim onerous property may be categorized as avoidance powers, in that they enable a transaction that a debtor has entered into to be set aside. They are, however, unconventional avoidance powers in that they do not enable the augmentation of the assets available for creditors: rather they are aimed at the disposal of assets. Moreover, it is perhaps stretching the definition of the term ‘avoidance provision’ to include the right of disclaimer, which is an administrative provision in nature, aimed at enabling the office holder to complete the administration of the liquidation or bankruptcy without being burdened by onerous property, such as unprofitable contracts or assets that are of no value to the estate. However, it may be argued that a further aim of the powers is in accordance with the general aims of many of the avoidance provisions: namely, to prevent needless depletion of the debtor’s assets by the continuance of contracts that are unprofitable or that give rise to liabilities.