On 1 July 2025, Olga Kikou spoke at the international conference “Access to Justice for Animals”, held at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, Germany. The two-day event brought together legal scholars, practitioners and advocates to explore a bold and timely question: Could Europe develop a legal instrument – inspired by the Aarhus Convention – that gives animals meaningful access to justice? Event website and programme
In the roundtable Stakeholders’ Perspectives: Barriers and Opportunities, we examined the political and institutional hurdles to establishing such a mechanism. Our intervention focused on the deep democratic gap that persists in EU law, where animals – though recognised as sentient beings – still have no enforceable legal standing to defend their interests when violated.
This isn’t just a theoretical debate. As legal experts have noted, animals are unprotected even in clear cases of suffering or neglect, simply because no legal subject is authorized to speak on their behalf. As argued in Advocates for Animals: Animals are not abstract concepts, they are rights-holders without rights enforcement.
The Aarhus Convention’s model, which grants access to justice in environmental matters to the public and NGOs, could offer a useful precedent. But it also reveals the challenge: even environmental NGOs had to fight hard for standing. For animals, a specific, tailored legal mechanism would be needed.
We support this agenda. We believe that giving animals access to justice – through designated representatives or public authorities – is a necessary step to enforce even the most basic welfare rules. Without legal accountability, laws become empty promises.
One thing is clear: if the EU wants to be serious about protecting animals and maintain a leading position, it needs to ensure their rights don’t end at the courtroom door.