ABSTRACT
This chapter covers how to approach efficient conflict resolution in cross-border environmental challenges. As the starting point, the article provides information on the EU's existing internal and external competences, highlighting their evolution. The presentation of this issue will facilitate an understanding of the uncertainties that may arise against the background of the EU's competence and the competence of Member States to accede to the Singapore Convention since, depending on the legal basis of Article 81 TFEU v Article 133 TFEU, the EU's competence may be shared with Member States or exclusive. The second pillar of the article is to present the broad spectrum of environmental legal norms in EU law and in terms of the same field in international agreements concluded by the EU. Against this background, the question of the control of the implementation of states’ obligations and the control of environmental protection arises. It seems that the former scope is realised in principle at the level of the EU courts and the latter at the level of national courts. These considerations lead to an illustration of how important it is to develop instruments for out-of-court protection based on flexible procedures. The third pillar is the presentation of mediation as a legal instrument, which has considerable flexibility in terms of subject and object adaptation and avoids disputes about the enforcement of judgments. The discussion draws attention to EU acts related to the mediation and enforcement of judgments and highlights, above all, the Singapore Convention on the Enforcement of Mediated Settlements. The broad discussion is intended to show what a model the Singapore Convention can be for a new approach to dispute resolution in environmental matters without collision with existing EU law. The final part of the article is devoted to the legal aspects of the accession of the EU, the EU and its Member States, or the Member States themselves to the Singapore Convention. The author's known concerns regarding the use of mediation as a legal protection instrument in environmental matters are also analysed. The concluding remarks support the opinion that the flexible mechanism of dispute resolution in environmental matters connected with an effective mechanism to enforce settlement agreements could enrich society at large and build a new path to dispute resolution. The ambition of the article is to convince the reader that, in the area of environmental disputes, it is much better to seek consensual paths based on mediation than to build judicial protection procedures.
