While Article 37 does not create enforceable rights, it provides a constitutional principle—a way to ‘green’ rights and reconcile human dignity with ecological integrity. The Charter connects sustainability with individual rights and access to justice. While Article 37 is not directly justiciable in the same way as legal rights, it is a guiding principle when courts must balance competing rights of an individual, e.g., environmental and economic rights.2 For example, in TestBioTech (T-177/13),3 the General Court stated that Article 37 provides a constitutional dimension to researching sustainability, even though express reliance upon the Article was not grounds for invalidation; rather, it was to help interpret a binding right or legislation. In this respect, Article 37 acts as a constitutional interpretive principle and is utilised in reviewing regulatory acts and policy decisions, particularly in environmental matters, such that environmental protection becomes a constitutional interpretative principle.

In affirming the constitutionalisation of EU rights, the Charter does little for sustainability. For example, Article 37 of the Charter states that a high level of environmental protection and improving environmental quality must be integrated into Union policies. However, this provision remains classified as a principle and not a right, which limits its legal status. Principles under the Charter do not provide subjective rights and cannot be relied upon in legal proceedings unless the principles are given effect by legislative acts. Citizens and civil society actors are not entitled to use the Charter to yield meaningful environmental results or challenge climate inaction. This significantly undermines its role in environmental litigation, juxtaposed to instances of regulatory inaction. Furthermore, Article 37 is conceptually ambiguous, referring only to “a high level of protection,” and offers no criteria or indicators or thresholds to assess its level of compliance. It lacks content and remains vague as a yardstick in terms of guiding legislative interpretation and retains strictly an anthropocentric conception of environmental protection, missing a valuable opportunity to meaningfully engage with evolving paradigms such as ecocentrism or rights of nature, whereas recent jurisprudential developments in countries such as Ecuador, Colombia or even within domestic courts in the Global North are far more progressive, the Charter appears cautious and established in its position vis-a-vis the environment. Article 37 of the Charter should be upgraded from a principle to a justiciable fundamental right, and where possible substantive and procedural standards grounded on environmental law should be incorporated and integrated.

Carducci, Bagni, Lorubbio et al. propose the development of an EU Charter of the Fundamental Rights of Nature, which would create a legal framework for nature as a subject with rights instead of, as now, being an object that one can protect solely for human benefit.4 While European Union (abbr. EU) environmental law is improving, it continues to treat nature as a legal object that is to be protected for human and other uses. The authors draw from some of the developments of a number of Latin American states included in their constitutions as well as from recent global case law and propose to provide recognition of nature as a legal subject with inherent rights, such as the rights to exist, the right to regenerate, and the right to develop. The policy proposed would articulate the recognition of nature’s rights in an EU Charter on Basic Rights of Nature, in conjunction with the already existent EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The proposed EU charter of fundamental rights would signify statutory obligations for public delegations and individual citizens, requiring them to protect and restore ecological subsystems; the charter would also invoke frameworks such as intergenerational equity, and the precautionary principle. They enforcement provisions are envisioned in the Charter and principles and substantive rights, like violation against rights themselves, include not exclusively rights, but also the parties responsible for upholding them.