The amendment to the Environmental Appeals Act (UmwRG) passed by the Federal Cabinet on January 21, 2026 is intended to speed up infrastructure projects. The draft law restricts the rights of environmental and nature conservation associations and thus limits measures that could delay projects. At the same time, however, it also expands the group of parties entitled to bring legal action.
The planned amendment is the subject of controversial debate: Industry particularly welcomes the removal of the suspensive effect of legal action. The Greens, SPD and environmental associations complain about a weakening of nature conservation.
The amendment of the law was initially a plan of the coalition of the traffic light coalition after the ECJ had repeatedly criticized that individual provisions of the law – in particular earlier provisions on substantive preclusion – did not meet the requirements of EU law on effective access to justice in environmental law.
The break-up of the coalition brought the legislative process to a standstill. It is now planned that the law will be passed around the middle of 2026. The Federal Council last took a position on the draft law on March 6, 2026.
In principle, the Environmental Appeals Act deals with special procedural powers for recognized environmental associations, in particular extended access to legal protection in court. In this respect, it supplements the Administrative Court Code.
What are the effects on approval procedures?
Further administrative decisions should be open to legal challenge by environmental associations.
The Environmental Appeals Act basically retains its current system: environmental associations can still only take legal action against certain legally listed decisions. However, this catalog is to be expanded. In future, additional environment-related administrative decisions will also be subject to review if they fall under the Aarhus Convention and were previously not or only incompletely covered. This primarily concerns additional approval, authorization and licensing procedures. For project developers and authorities, this means that procedures that were previously rarely the focus of legal action by associations will be more open to legal challenge in future. For authorities and project sponsors, the need for adjustment and review in procedural practice will increase.
What do the changes mean in practice?
Authorizing authorities
For approval authorities, the UmwRG amendment primarily shifts the risk area of their own decisions. The scope of application of the right of action for associations is being extended without abandoning the list-based system. This means that more decisions can be reviewed by the courts, including those that were previously not or only marginally the focus of environmental association actions. The decisive factor is less the individual technical issue than the procedural architecture as a whole. Procedural steps, documentation and considerations must be set up in such a way that they can withstand judicial review, even in cases where the likelihood of legal action was previously assumed to be low. Preparation here means above all: reviewing internal processes, sharpening interfaces between specialist departments and ensuring that acceleration targets are not thwarted by new areas of attack.
Project sponsor
Companies with construction, infrastructure or industrial projects are also affected by the amendment to the Environmental Appeals Act. The UmwRG is formally aimed at authorities and environmental associations. In fact, however, the changes have a direct impact on schedules, costs and investment security. If additional approval and authorization procedures come under judicial review, the requirements for preparing and monitoring procedures will increase. Projects that were previously considered legally “robust” may be challenged earlier or more frequently in future. Legal and project departments should therefore check at an early stage which projects potentially fall under the extended scope of application, where documentation and expert opinions need to be particularly robust and how the risks of legal action can be realistically assessed. Preparation means here: Not only formally obtaining approvals, but also strategically making them resistant to legal action.
Municipalities and public project sponsors
The amendment to the UmwRG is particularly challenging for local authorities because they are often affected in two roles at the same time: as a licensing authority and as the promoter of their own projects. The extension of the scope of application can lead to municipal projects becoming the focus of environmental association lawsuits, while at the same time their own administrative practice must meet the new requirements. This increases the need for coordination within the municipality and makes conflicts of interest more visible. It is therefore important to have a clear separation of roles, transparent procedures and clear documentation of the basis for decision-making. Preparation here means, above all, checking at an early stage which municipal projects will become more legally sensitive in future and adapting your own approval practices in parallel to avoid delays and frictional losses.
Procedural changes to speed up proceedings
The draft law aims to further streamline the collective action proceedings before the administrative courts.
The abuse clause in Section 5 UmwRG is to be made much more specific. In future, objections are to be excluded in court proceedings if they were deliberately and reproachably not raised in the upstream administrative procedure, although there were proper opportunities for participation.
A shortening of the time limits for the statement of grounds and response in Section 6 UmwRG-E is also intended to help speed up the process. However, the existing deadline of ten weeks for the complete presentation of facts and evidence by the claimant is to be retained.
Courts should also be able to set a deadline for the defendant authority and other parties to respond in order to bundle the procedural material at an early stage and focus the proceedings on the issues relevant to the decision. However, late submissions on this side should not have the same preclusive consequences as for the plaintiff. For the first time, the ten-week deadline for submitting reasons is to be expressly extended to applications for judicial review pursuant to Section 47 VwGO, so that proceedings against development plans in particular will in future be subject to the same strict requirements for submitting reasons. There is still no provision for an obligation to provide information about the deadline and the legal consequences of missing it.
The new provision in Section 7 (6) UmwRG-E is particularly relevant for major projects, according to which objections and legal challenges to certain infrastructure projects will no longer have a suspensive effect in future. Legal remedies by recognized associations and affected parties will therefore no longer automatically lead to a de facto construction freeze, but will instead shift effective legal protection to the fast-track court procedure.
At the same time, a new Section 7a UmwRG-E specifies the scope of the court’s official investigation. The duty to clarify the facts is to be expressly limited to the field outlined by the party’s submission and concrete evidence.
Outlook
It is still uncertain whether the law will actually be passed in summer 2026. In its statement on March 6, 2026, the Federal Council was largely critical. In particular, it complained that the draft law would lead to an increase in bureaucracy in the administration, but also in civil society. This applies, for example, to the time limit on the recognition of environmental associations provided for in the draft bill, which will lead to a repeated large administrative burden on the part of the recognition bodies and associations. In addition, the draft leaves the potential of fictitious approvals and completeness unused, which the Federal Council sees as a contradiction between the aim of modernizing and simplifying administration on the one hand and the regulations actually planned on the other.
