Unione europea, tutela ambientale e diritto internazionale privato: l’art. 7 del regolamento Roma II

Art. 7 of Regulation No. 864/07 (so called Rome II Regulation) provides a specific conflict-of- law rule concerning liability for environmental damage, which empowers the person seeking compensation for damage to choose the lex loci actus instead of the lex loci damni as basis for his or her claim. The paper, first, investigates the rationale for entrusting only one of the parties involved in the environmental damage (i.e. the person seeking compensation) with the right to unilaterally choose the law governing the claim for damage, and reaches the conclusion that the provision at issue does not only (or mainly) purport to affect the balance between the said parties, but rather aims at ensuring a high level of environmental protection, both by preventing a race to the bottom of the relevant national legal standards and by discouraging the environmental dumping. Further, the paper (i) compares the specific provision laid down by Art. 7 of Rome II Regulation with the general-conflict-of law rule provided by Art. 4, which exceptionally vests (not the person seeking compensation for damage, but) national courts with the power to derogate from the lex loci damni in principle applicable, and (ii) underlines the specific role played – in the context of environmental liability – by party autonomy, also in light of the provisions of Art. 14 of the Regulation itself. An English version of this paper is published (with shorter footnotes) in European Legal Forum, 2013, pp. 137-144.