'Aarhus Environmental Rights' in Eastern Europe

A major premise of this article is that the Aarhus Convention enjoys a special status with respect to societies that lived under scientific socialist regimes. It gives a brief historical exposition of what the author terms "a residual common ecological consciousness of transition" in those societies and examines some of the factors leading to the development of this consciousness and the immediate law and policy responses. Finally, it extracts common elements relevant to countries in Eastern Europe and draws some provisional distinctions based upon the different course of development of new EU Member States and countries that are members of the Commonwealth of Independent States.