European Court of Human Rights rules on climate procedural obligations in petroleum gas licensing

On 28 October 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) delivered its judgment in Greenpeace Nordic and Others v. Norway (available here), rejecting the applicants’ claim that a 2016 decision by Norway to license petroleum gas exploration and production projects in the Barents Sea breached the State’s procedural obligations to guarantee its citizens the right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“Convention”). Unlike the landmark KlimaSeniorinnen case, which addressed States’ substantive climate obligations, this case focused specifically on the environmental procedural adequacy of licensing petroleum gas exploration and production projects.

While the ECtHR ultimately found no violation, this decision establishes important environmental procedural standards which could have wide-ranging impacts on the licensing of oil & gas projects across Europe. 

Key takeaways

• Under Article 8 of the Convention, environmental impact assessments (“EIAs”) of petroleum gas exploration and production projects must quantify the expected greenhouse gas emissions (“GHGs”) from downstream combustion, including exported combustion emissions. 

• Authorities undertaking EIAs of petroleum gas exploration and production projects must test the project’s compatibility with the country’s international and national climate commitments and ensure early, informed public participation when alternatives remain open.

• The Court’s approach relies heavily on recent opinions from other international bodies that have emphasised climate-specific assessment, including downstream, cumulative and transboundary effects.

• In the specific case of Norway’s national offshore petroleum gas licensing regime, the ECtHR found that some significant environmental effects, including (exported) combustion emissions, could be assessed at the later “Plan for Development and Operation” stage, without violating Article 8 of the Convention, even if they were not assessed earlier during the exploration phase.

Background 

Under EU law, plans and programmes (see SEA Directive 2001/42/EC) as well as individual projects (see EIA Directive 2011/92/EC) which are likely to have significant environmental effects must be subject to an EIA, public consultation and development consent. As an EFTA Member State, these instruments also apply to Norway. The latter is also a party to the Espoo Convention on EIA in a transboundary context and its SEA Protocol.

Norway’s national offshore petroleum gas licensing regime operates through three distinct stages:

• First, the national Parliament may give its consent to the opening of a sea area for exploration, with a view to granting petroleum production licences. This step usually involves a strategic environmental assessment (“SEA”) and public consultation. 

• Second, once an area has been opened, the Ministry awards licences for petroleum gas production, usually in the form of “rounds”, enabling exploration drilling. No additional EIA requirement appears to apply at this step. The applicants’ challenge concerned the 2016 licensing round. 

• Finally, once and if profitable gas has been found, a so-called Plan for Development and Operation (“PDO”) must be approved, which involves new project-level EIAs and public consultation.

The applicants are two NGOs, Greenpeace Nordic and Young Friends of the Earth, and six individuals who are current or former members of the second NGO. They claimed that Norway’s decision-making process for the 2016 licensing round breached their rights to a (healthy) life and privacy as enshrined in Articles 2 and 8 of the Convention, because the authorities had not conducted an adequate assessment of climate-related harm before granting the licences. Among other things, they contended that there had been no assessment of the projects’ downstream effects on combustion emissions in Norway and abroad. The applicants also complained about the Supreme Court of Norway’s ruling that some significant environmental effects could be assessed at the later PDO stage.

After unsuccessful challenges before the national first instance court, appellate court and Supreme Court, the applicants brought their claim before the ECtHR.

ECtHR’s findings

Admissibility

Before engaging with the merits, the ECtHR ruled on the Norwegian government’s objections that (i) Article 8 was not applicable and (ii) the applicants lacked standing.

On applicability, the ECtHR reaffirmed its Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz decision that Article 8 guarantees a right to enjoy effective protection by the State authorities from serious adverse effects on their life, health, well-being and quality of life arising from the harmful effects and risks caused by climate change.” Applicants must prove an “actual interference” with their enjoyment of these rights — i.e., whether exploration licences, which do not themselves authorise extraction, are sufficiently and closely linked to their alleged future climate harm.

The ECtHR accepted that there was a sufficiently close link between exploration licences and future extraction, noting that petroleum gas exploration is inherently linked to future production.

On standing, and again referring to its Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz decision (see our previous blog post), the ECtHR reiterated that associations may have standing due to “specific considerations relating to climate change” and “the special feature of climate change as a common concern of humankind and the necessity of promoting intergenerational burden-sharing in this context”, but limited to this specific context. In this case, the two NGOs were found to have standing as they were lawfully established, dedicated to protecting affected individuals from climate harms, and genuinely qualified to represent individuals exposed to specific threats or adverse effects of climate change.

By contrast, the ECtHR found that the six individual applicants lacked victim status under Article 34 of the Convention, due to the high threshold applicable in climate cases. The ECtHR concluded that it did not have sufficient information to identify a correlation between the individuals’ alleged harm and their complaints before the Court.

Merits

On the merits, the ECtHR reaffirmed that the State has an obligation under Article 8 of the Convention “to do its part” to ensure effective protection against serious adverse effects of climate change on life, health, well-being and quality of life. States have wide discretion regarding the means chosen to fulfil their climate obligations. However, the ECtHR closely reviews whether national decision-making processes incorporate procedural safeguards, as these are “especially material in determining whether the respondent State has remained within its margin of appreciation”.

In particular, procedural safeguards must include: 

• “an adequate, timely and comprehensive environmental impact assessment in good faith and based on the best available science […] before authorising a potentially dangerous activity”;

• in the context of petroleum gas production projects, “the environmental impact assessment must include, at a minimum, a quantification of the GHG emissions anticipated to be produced (including the combustion emissions both within the country and abroad; compare, mutatis mutandis, Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others, cited above, § 550)”;

• at public authority level, “an assessment of whether the activity is compatible with their obligations under national and international law”; 

• public consultation “when all options are still open and when pollution can realistically be prevented at source.” 

According to the ECtHR, its position is parallelled by other recent advisory opinions from other international courts, including the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (2024 Advisory Opinion), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Advisory Opinion OC-32/25), the International Court of Justice (2025 Advisory Opinion) and the EFTA Court (2025 Advisory Opinion).

In this case, even though the ECtHR found the processes leading to Norway’s 2016 decision were not fully comprehensive, it was satisfied that the climate-related impact assessment - particularly regarding exported combustion emissions - will be conducted at the PDO stage. However, the ECtHR cautioned that widespread EIA waivers at the PDO stage (which Norway’s national law allowed) could undermine effective protection of the rights under Article 8. Three structural guarantees convinced the Court that such deferral could be compatible with Article 8 in this case:

• the Supreme Court’s express constitutional bar on approving PDOs where climate considerations so indicate;

• the EFTA Court’s requirement to nullify unlawful consequences of missing EIAs and allow regularisation; and

• the government’s assurance that climate impacts of petroleum production and related combustion emissions would be assessed when any new PDO is considered.

Finally, the ECtHR rejected the applicants’ further claims under Articles 13 (access to an effective remedy) and Article 14 (discrimination) of the Convention, on the basis that PDO-stage procedures can deliver comprehensive climate EIAs with informed public participation, affected persons can effectively challenge authorisations, and the discrimination claim had not been raised before the lower courts.

What does it mean for businesses?

Although the Court found no violation in this case, the judgment establishes important procedural benchmarks that may shape how Contracting States assess and authorise petroleum gas projects. In particular, the ECtHR expressly stated that Contracting States must conduct a comprehensive EIA of petroleum gas exploration and production projects, including assessing (exported) combustion emissions.

In the specific case of Norway’s national offshore petroleum gas licensing regime, the ECtHR found that some significant environmental effects, including (exported) combustion emissions, could be assessed at the later PDO stage, without violating Article 8 of the Convention, even if they were not assessed earlier during the exploration phase. However, other Contracting States might not have this three-step licensing scheme. In this context, businesses should ensure comprehensive climate EIAs based on the best available science, and conduct early, meaningful public consultations. Other Contracting States which would not already quantify exported combustion emissions, may need to strengthen their licensing processes to comply with this decision. 

Note that the ECtHR’s decision was based on Article 8 of the Convention. However, Member States of the EU and EFTA must also comply with specific SEA/EIA Directives under EU law (as mentioned above). These instruments require, among other things, an assessment of ‘indirect effects’; however, the geographic extent of this test remains undecided in EU law. National courts have adopted different approaches to Scope 3 GHG emissions, and it is not clear how the Court of Justice of the EU would rule on this point, nor whether it would follow the same position as the one adopted by the ECtHR under Article 8 of the Convention. 

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