Legal summary
October 2025
Greenpeace Nordic and Others v. Norway - 34068/21
Judgment 28.10.2025 [Section II]
Article 8
Positive obligations
Article 8-1
Respect for family life
Respect for private life
Procedural obligation to conduct an adequate, timely and comprehensive environmental impact assessment in good faith, based on the best available science during the licensing process of petroleum exploration: no violation
Article 34
Locus standi
Victim
Victim status of individual applicants and standing (locus standi) of applicant organisations regarding climate complaints as a result of petroleum exploration licensing: inadmissible in respect of individual applicants; standing of applicant organisations upheld
Facts – The two applicant non-governmental organisations (Greenpeace Nordic and Young Friends of the Earth (Nature and Youth)) sought judicial review of the validity of the 2016 decision of the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy to grant ten petroleum exploration licences to thirteen private companies concerning areas in the Barents Sea (23rd licensing round). They appealed unsuccessfully up to the Supreme Court.
The applicants (the two applicant organisations and six individuals affiliated with one of them) complained before the Court that the 2016 decision rendered possible the actual and potential substantive harm stemming from the burning of the petroleum projected to be extracted from the south and south-east Barents Sea and that the State had failed to regulate the licensing in a way that safeguarded the individuals’ rights to be protected from climate harm. Furthermore, they complained that during the licensing round the authorities had failed to make an adequate environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the potential climate-related harm to life, health, well-being and quality of life and of the Supreme Court’s finding that the assessment of significant environmental effects could be deferred to a later Plan for Development and Operation (PDO) stage of the decision‑making process. They relied on Articles 2 and 8 of the Convention.
Law –
Article 8:
Following the approach it took in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland [GC], the Court considered it appropriate to examine the applicants’ complaints from the standpoint of Article 8 only.
(1) Scope of the case – The scope of the case as determined, given the subsidiarity principle, by the subject-matter of the domestic proceedings brought by the applicant organisations and which they complained about before the Court, only covered the allegedly faulty decision-making process in the specific round of licensing of petroleum exploration, which would precede petroleum production. The applicants’ general complaint against Norwegian climate or petroleum policy was thus outside of the scope of the Court’s examination. However, as also observed by the Supreme Court during the disputed proceedings, the challenge to the validity of the administrative decision at issue could not be assessed in a vacuum but had to be considered in the light of its cumulative consequences for petroleum policy and for the climate as a whole. It followed that the present case differed from the case of Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others, in that it concerned the State’s procedural, rather than substantive, obligations, and was limited to ten exploration licences. Nonetheless, it still raised the issue of the State’s alleged failure to effectively protect individuals from the serious adverse effects of climate change on their life, health, well-being and quality of life. Therefore, the Court’s approach in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others and the general principles elaborated in that case guided, mutatis mutandis, its examination of the present case.
(2) Admissibility –
Applicability of Article 8 – Following the approach taken in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others, the Court examined the issue of victim status of the individual applicants and the locus standi of the applicant organisations in the context of its assessment of the applicability of Article 8. In that connection, it applied the respective criteria set out in that case.
(a) Whether there was a sufficiently close link between the disputed 2016 decision and climate change – While exploration would not always, and certainly not automatically or unconditionally, be followed by extraction, in Norway it was a legal and practical precondition for it. The fact that other events and permits were necessary before extraction could take place did not break the causal nexus with the adverse effects of climate change from fossil fuel emissions. In the circumstances, it was clear that the petroleum project in question had been of such a nature as to entail potential risks of extraction. The fact that the licences had been relinquished by the companies (as no potentially profitable gas discoveries had been made) did not break the causal nexus for the applicability of Article 8; certain areas of the south Barents Sea which had been opened for exploration under a licence that had been subsequently relinquished could enter an automatically extended re-licensing cycle under the APA system; that had indeed happened with the area subject to a licence issued in the 23rd licensing round and then relinquished.
The Court also noted that oil and gas extraction was the most important source of GHG emissions of Norway and that the burning of fossil fuels, including oil and gas, was among the main causes of climate change. As accepted in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others there were sufficiently reliable indications that anthropogenic climate change existed, that it posed a serious current and future threat to the enjoyment of the human rights guaranteed under the Convention, that States were aware of it and capable of taking measures to effectively address it, that the relevant risks were projected to be lower if the rise in temperature was limited to 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels and if action was taken urgently, and that current global mitigation efforts were not sufficient to meet that target.
Accordingly, the Court concluded that there was a sufficiently close link between the disputed procedure for the licensing of exploration and serious adverse effects of climate change on the lives, health. well-being and quality of life of individuals.
(b) Victim status of the individual applicants – The Court found that the victim-status criteria had not been fulfilled. In particular, the individual applicants’ allegations of an impact of climate change on their mental health and/or life choices was not supported by any medical certificates. Nor did they indicate any particular morbidity or other serious adverse effect on their health or well-being that had been created by climate change and that would go beyond that experienced by any young person living in Norway with a degree of awareness about climate change. As regards the individual applicants who identified as members of the Sámi people, while the Court fully appreciated that climate change posed a threat to the traditional Sámi way of life and culture, it could not conclude that the hardships that the situation complained of might be causing them personally were of “high intensity”.
The case file contained no other materials showing that the individual applicants had been subjected to a high intensity of exposure to the adverse effects of climate change which had affected them personally, or that there was a pressing need to ensure their individual protection from the harm which the effects of climate change might have on their enjoyment of their human rights.
Conclusion: inadmissible (incompatible ratione personae) (unanimously).
(c) Locus standi of the applicant organisations – The Court found that the applicant organisations had the necessary locus standi and that Article 8 was applicable to their complaint. The applicant organisations were lawfully established, pursued a dedicated purpose in accordance with their statutory objectives in the defence of the human rights of their members and/or other affected individuals from the threats arising from climate change in the respondent State and were genuinely qualified to act on behalf of and to represent individuals who might arguably claim to be subject to specific threats or adverse effects of climate change.
Conclusion: applicant associations standing upheld; Article 8 applicable; admissible (unanimously)
(3) Merits – Recalling that the procedural safeguards available were especially material in determining whether Member States had remained within their wide margin of appreciation, the Court found that, as regards the State’s decision-making process in the context of environment and climate change, States were under a procedural obligation to conduct an adequate, timely and comprehensive EIA in good faith and based on the best available science before authorising a potentially dangerous activity that might be harmful to the right for individuals to effective protection by the State authorities from serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being and quality of life. In the context of petroleum production projects, the EIA must at least include a quantification of the GHG emissions anticipated to be produced. Moreover, the public authorities had to assess whether the activity was compatible with their obligations under national and international law to take effective measures against the adverse effects of climate change. Lastly, informed public consultation must take place at a time when all options were still open and when pollution could realistically be prevented.
The Court’s view on the existence of such a procedural obligation was paralleled by recent rulings of other international courts relating to other international legal instruments and, more broadly, to international law.
Norway had adhered to the international legal framework on climate change and had devised national laws setting the requisite objectives and goals. Furthermore, petroleum activities were highly regulated under the domestic framework. However, processes leading to the 2016 decision had not been fully comprehensive, in view of the deferral of the assessment of factors such as climate effects, ecological relationships and ocean acidification to the stage of management plans and of the subject of exported combustion emissions either to general climate policy or to any future PDO stage. The Court also noted that the requirement to conduct an EIA in the PDO stage could be waived in certain cases and that a widespread use of such waivers could undermine the purpose of the EIA.
However, recalling the respondent State’s wide margin of appreciation in this field, the Court attached greater importance to the following developments which structurally reinforced the guarantee to effectively implement the relevant procedural obligations with regards to PDOs and which were meant to ensure that before a PDO was approved there was a comprehensive EIA of the petroleum production effects on the climate, including the effects of combustion emissions in Norway and abroad. Firstly, the Supreme Court had clearly stated that the authorities had a constitutional obligation not to approve a PDO if the general consideration for the climate and environment at the time so indicated. Secondly, the EFTA Court had recently held that Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment (“EIA Directive”) required a national court to eliminate the unlawful consequences of a failure to carry out a full EIA which accounted for petroleum combustion emissions. Regularisation was permitted by conducting an EIA while the project was underway or even after it had been completed, but only if it did not serve to circumvent the rules of the European Economic Area law and if it took a retrospective view of the environmental impact of the project. Thirdly, the Government had given official assurance that the climate impacts of petroleum production and combustion emissions would be assessed when any new PDO was considered, and that they would be set out in approval decisions.
The Court was thus satisfied that the PDO stage of the decision-making process would involve a comprehensive EIA of the effects of the anticipated petroleum production on climate change, comprising, among other things, the assessment of combustion emissions, and that informed public consultation would take place before the decision is taken. Moreover, it did not identify any structural problem that would undermine the conclusion that the legal framework was being implemented effectively, or find any indication that a deferred EIA was inherently insufficient to support the State’s guarantees of private and family life under Article 8, particularly in terms of its timeliness or contents. The persons affected by the risks of climate change linked to petroleum production – and relevant associations, such as the applicant organisations in the present case – would be able to act on information obtained through an EIA in time to effectively challenge the authorisation of a project. Moreover, any assessment of GHG emissions, project by project, that would disregard the cumulative GHG emissions of all those projects combined, was prohibited under the EIA Directive. Lastly, according to domestic law, any EIA must be based on relevant, up-to-date, and sufficient information which constituted an important safeguard against any bad faith assessments by licensee developers.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
(See Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland [GC], 53600/20, 9 April 2024, Legal Summary)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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