Highlights

  • Video
    The climate crisis is also a human rights crisis, affecting a wide range of rights, exposing global inequality and social injustice. This FRF theme tackles topics such as climate change and human rights, business responsibility, and rethinking wealth distribution together with Leena Ylä-Mononen, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, Gunther Beger, Managing Director for SDG Innovation at UNIDO, Elena Kountouri Tapiero, Regional Representative for Europe at OHCHR, among others.
  • Report / Paper / Summary
    15
    January
    2025
    Climate change affects the daily lives of everyone in the EU and has significant environmental, economic, social and health impacts. To tackle this, the European Green Deal was adopted in 2019. This report examines the Green Deal from a fundamental rights perspective, with the aim of protecting the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment for all. It highlights the lack of fundamental rights in EU climate policy and the need to incorporate these rights into future legislation. It also considers how applying a human-rights-based approach to climate policy could support a fair and inclusive transition.
    Publications and data
    15
    December
    2025
    This factsheet outlines key judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) relating to the intersection of climate change and human rights. The issues examined include territorial jurisdiction, standards of protection, standing and victim status, and procedural guarantees in climate-related cases, including the rights of access to information. It is intended to assist legal practitioners, policymakers, and researchers in understanding and applying the evolving human rights jurisprudence in the context of climate change within the European legal space.