Suchergebnisse

Increasingly complex, complicated and demanding environmental regulations continually create higher and higher level of legal risk for businesses and society as a whole. It also puts on the companies the burden of additional costs that have to be included into the price of their goods and services. The legal protection of environment is complicated not only from the standpoint of legislation but also in terms of its implementation and compliance. The system of environmental protection must be the pillar that supports the development of sustainable nature, economy and society. To achieve that goal the system needs to be based on the "polluter pays" principle and it needs to include efficient cooperation between different stakeholders, amongst which companies have an important place. In addition to being an active partner in environmental protection, companies are at the same time the market participants so they must think about relevant costs. They must include into their decision making process all environmental regulations and all relevant financial and fiscal instruments.

Since the modernisation of the Basic Regulations in 2017 and 2018, the EU explicitly exerts social and environmental goals through the application of its trade defence instruments. Whereas the Commission portrayed the new rules as a guarantee that high European standards would not disadvantage the European industry in application of trade defence instruments, commentators were quick to question the EU's true intentions behind the inclusion of social and environmental considerations. This article reviews three major aspects of social and environmental considerations in trade defence practice: the significant distortions methodology, the new calculation of the injury margin and the application of the Union interest test. This article commends the EU's effort to reconcile the two seemingly opposing goals of trade defence and social and environmental protection, and identifies areas of improvement as well as possibilities to options to further "green" the trade defence instruments.