Stay Grounded x Opportunity Green toolkit: Avenues to challenge airport expansion

Background  

Covering four thematic areas – air quality, biodiversity, climate change and noise – the legal toolkit unpacks the EU framework applicable to each, identifying the most promising routes for individuals and groups to challenge new or expanding airports.

The toolkit also explains that, under EU law, Member States have several lawful routes to introduce airport capacity caps or limits, including through traffic distribution rules, air quality plans and biodiversity protections. Slot allocation then provides a mechanism for implementing those caps in practice. Doing so would also help Member States meet their overlapping obligations under climate, biodiversity and human rights law. Where these routes are under-utilised by States, these can represent key opportunities for campaigning.

While local legal advice should always be sought, this toolkit provides communities, NGOs and campaigners with a practical starting point for identifying where legal pressure, public participation and political campaigning may be most effective at the EU level.

What’s covered in the toolkit? 

• EU law already allows Governments to introduce airport capacity caps, despite prevailing narratives from pro-growth stakeholders. Campaigners should advocate for caps using the significant legal grounds in the Air Services Regulation and Slot Regulation (Read our legal briefing on States’ ability to reduce slot capacity for environmental reasons under the Slot Regulation).
• Why climate change is a promising ground for legal challenge, particularly where Environmental Impact Assessments fail to account properly for downstream flight emissions and non-CO₂ impacts from aviation.
• How the revised EU Ambient Air Quality Directive could strengthen future challenges by requiring better monitoring of airport pollution hotspots and creating potential routes to access to justice and compensation.
• How biodiversity protections, particularly under the EU Habitats Directive’s Natura 2000 framework, can provide routes to challenge airport expansion where protected sites may be harmed.
• Why noise remains an important public health issue but is generally a more difficult legal basis for capacity caps because of the restrictive EU Balanced Approach Regulation.
• Case studies from across Europe and beyond, including Schiphol, Gatwick, Luton, Leeds Bradford, Heathrow and Seattle, showing how legal challenges and campaigns have approached airport expansion, pollution and capacity limits.

Visit Stay Grounded’s ‘Red Lines for Airports’ campaign page to access the toolkit along with regular national level updates on anti-airport expansion and capacity reduction efforts from the network.

Download toolkit