G. The Netherlands

In the Netherlands, this will surely be remembered as the year in which the judiciary locked up society again—not with legal reforms but, rather, with two judgments that defined legal development in this country. First, in May, the Dutch Council of State rendered its follow-up judgment in the case regarding the compatibility of the Dutch program for nitrogen oxide depositions with the European Union’s (EU) Nature Conservation Law (Dutch Council of State, Stichting Werkgroep Behoud de Peel, ECLI:NL:RVS:2019:1603 and Dutch Council of State, De Coöperatie Mobilisation for the Environment U.A. en de Vereniging Leefmilieu, ECLI:NL:RVS:2019:1604). This was in compliance with what the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) had stated in its preliminary ruling of 7 November 2018 (Joined Cases C-293/17 and C-294/17, Coöperatie Mobilisation for the Environment UA and Vereniging Leefmilieu v College van Gedeputeerde Staten van Limburg and College van Gedeputeerde Staten van Gelderland, ECLI:EU:C:2018:882). Second, the Urgenda case reached its final status thanks to the ruling of the Dutch Supreme Court on 20 December 2019 (Supreme Court, Urgenda v The Netherlands, ECLI:NL:HR:2019:2006). Both judgments and their legal and societal impacts are briefly discussed in this contribution.