The Polluter-Pays Principle and Site Ownership: the European Jurisprudential Developments and the Italian Experience

Abstract

Drawing upon the European Court of Justice jurisprudence on the Environmental Liability Directive, the present contribution intends to discuss the prospects for establishing a relation of coherence between the polluter-pays principle and remediation procedures; throughout the discussion, a particular attention will be dedicated to the legislative and jurisprudential perspective of Italy on the position of the soil owner with respect to remediation of pollution he did not contribute to. Recent jurisprudential developments conferred new impulse to the debate revolving around the scope and significance of the polluter-pays principle; in particular, ecj, case C-534/13 offers scope to discuss the possibility of, and profitability for, the codification of a benchmark for soil owner’s liability: the conferral of a “warranty position” to the soil owner may eventually be grounded on the assessment of his causal contribution by means of omission.