HAVET & VANHUFFEL – Association d’avocats
In a judgment dated January 10, 2025, the Irish High Court examined the refusal of authorization for a wind farm due in particular to visual nuisance.
The High Court upheld the applicant’s appeal and found that the licensing authority had acted unlawfully in failing to exercise its powers in a manner as consistent as possible with the objectives and policy climate laws set out in a 2015 Irish climate law.
For the High Court, this failure constitutes a violation of European Union law and in particular a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which, for the record, guarantees respect for private and family life.
To do this, the High Court refers, among others, to the case of KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and others v. Switzerland of April 9, 2024 of the European Court of Human Rights.
For the record, the European Court of Human Rights considered in this judgment that failures in climate policies can be considered a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (See regarding this judgment : (https://earthlaw.network/fr/suisse-la-cour-europeenne-des-droits-de-lhomme-condamnation-dun-etat-pour-inaction-climatique/).
The authority issuing a permit must take climate objectives into account when evaluating the application.
However, that was not the case in this case. If the balance to be achieved between the climate objectives to be achieved and local sensitivities relating to landscape and land use planning policies is not obvious, the consequences of climate change – if they are not taken into account – will be much worse, and the landscape will also change.
The High Court does not, however, accept the violation of Council Regulation (EU) 2022/2577 of December 22, 2022 establishing a framework to accelerate the deployment of renewable energies (Official Journal of the European Union of December 29, 2022 – https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32022R2577).
This decision could be transposed in others countries.
The High Court’s decision is available via the link: https://climatecasechart.com/wp-content/uploads/non-us-case-documents/2025/20250110_88913_judgment.pdf.
