Our doctoral student Alina Holzhausen made a submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of Cultural Rights and acted as National Rapporteur for Germany in a project focusing on the proposed reversal of the burden of proof in the current revision process of the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED)
Alina, who is also a Researcher in Environmental and Climate Change Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) together with her colleague Kristin Hausler prepared a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of Cultural Rights for the upcoming report on ‘Cultural Rights and Migration’. In their submission, they built on their research for a project funded by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), which focuses on the role of cultural heritage in strengthening climate resilience in the South Pacific region. The submission to the UN Special Rapporteur focuses on cultural heritage and climate induced displacement of South Pacific Island States, and can be read here under ‘BIICL’.
In a project at BIICL, funded by ClientEarth, Alina also undertook research as National Rapporteur for Germany to examine how the proposal to adapt the burden of proof for compensation claims under the IED could be implemented into the domestic law of EU Member States. The proposed amendments would introduce a rebuttable presumption that the defendant is liable, when a claimant is able to provide 'sufficiently robust evidence' that a violation of the IED has caused, or significantly contributed to, damage to their health. The project focused on six Member States, namely Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland, and the comparative study entailing the findings of the respective country reports can be read here. The proposed IED amendments are currently discussed at EU level.
