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POLLUTION

Climate change worries halt Vienna airport’s third runway

A court has blocked Vienna airport's plans for a third runway saying it would have resulted in greater greenhouse gas emissions, in a verdict described by lawyers as a first.

Published: 10 February 2017 17:55 CET
Climate change worries halt Vienna airport's third runway
View of Vienna airport. Photo: Hansueli Krapf/Wikimedia

Austria's Federal Administrative Court said in a ruling published late on Thursday that the “positive aspects of the project cannot justify the high extra carbon dioxide pollution.”

A third runway would result in a “significant” rise in greenhouse gas output, contravening the country's domestic and international undertakings to reduce emissions, a statement said.

“The airport's possibilities to reduce CO2 emissions through its own measures (such as the installation of solar panels and changing its vehicles to electric cars) were insufficient,” it added.

“As far as I know this is unique that climate protection is used as an argument to block a concrete plan,” Christian Schmelz, a lawyer for the airport, told the newspaper Die Presse.

Erika Wagner, head of the Environmental Law Institute at Linz University, called it a “landmark ruling”.

The airport, which handled 23 million passengers in 2016 and which has wanted to construct the runway for a decade, said it would appeal, possibly at Austria's highest court.

ENVIRONMENT

EU top court rules against Austria wolf hunting

The European Union's top court ruled Thursday that Austria had no right to hunt wolves, after activists contested killings of the protected species in the Alpine nation.

Published: 11 July 2024 16:58 CEST
EU top court rules against Austria wolf hunting

Several regions of Austria started to allow wolves to be killed last year after reporting that the animals were increasingly attacking livestock.

Environmental groups brought a case to court in Austria’s Tyrol province, arguing that hunting wolves violated an EU directive adopted in 1992 protecting the animals.

The Tyrol court asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for guidance.

“A derogation from that (wolf hunting) prohibition to prevent economic damage is only to be granted if the wolf population is at a favourable conservation status, which is not the case in Austria,” the ECJ said in its ruling.

“The Austrian government has itself admitted that the wolf population in Austria is not at a favourable conservation status.”

Twenty wolves have been killed in Austria since last year, according to the country’s Bear-Wolf-Lynx Centre.

NGOs estimated there were around 80 individual wolves in the country in 2022, marking a gradual return of an animal that disappeared in the 19th century.

Regional Austrian governments have appealed for the wolves’ protection status to be reduced, saying it is no longer threatened.

Following the ruling, the Tyrol government said the regulations it had passed to allow wolves to be shot had “proved their worth” and vowed to continue allowing the animals to be killed.

Tyrol said decisions to kill the animals were made on a “case-by-case basis” and took into account “the special features of our alpine farming”.

In its response to the ruling, Austria’s branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) urged politicians to “move away from their populist false solutions”.

Austria’s provinces have also failed to “utilise EU funds to promote livestock protection measures or train shepherds” unlike other countries, the NGO said in a press release.

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