Sea Seminar:
Green Deal and the Coherence of EU Climate, Energy, Environmental, and Food Production Legislation in a Marine Context

Prof. Niko Soininen

The EU is aiming at a green transition across several sectors of society. This presentation explores the dynamics of the EU legal system in implementing the EU Green Deal. The presentation contends that sustainability transitions promoted and required by the Green Deal will need to carefully navigate the paradox of law driving radical change to sustainability on the one hand and protecting existing economic uses of the marine environment on the other. This is particularly challenging as the EU regimes in climate, energy, environmental and food production law – in their marine context – each have a distinct perspective to the use and protection of the marine environment, and EU law does not provide a hierarchy making it possible to prioritise the objectives, legal obligations and drivers between the four legal domains examined here.

Niko Soininen (LL.D) is Professor of Environmental Law at the University of Eastern Finland School of law, co-director of the Center for Climate, Energy and Environmental Law (CCEEL) and co-director of the interdisciplinary UEF Water Research Programme. He currently leads a Strategic Research Council funded project ‘Resilience of Complex Legal Systems in Sustainability Transformation’. His research focuses on the law and governance of complex social-ecological systems with a particular emphasis on freshwater, marine and urban systems. Outside academia, he has worked as a consultant for HELCOM, the World Bank, and for several Finnish ministries.

The Sea Seminar series is a collaboration between the ÅAU profiling area The Sea and SOS. The seminars are organized once a month with a hybrid setup (click here for online participation), and they are open to everyone interested in marine and sustainability issues.