The precautionary principle is widely regarded as a distinctively European legal construct, grounded in science-conditioned risk assessment, provisional measures and a health-protective orientation. This article challenges that assumption by examining how the principle works within China’s own regulatory tradition in the case of cultivated meat, a novel food technology that existing frameworks in both jurisdictions were not designed to address. Drawing on the treatment of cultivated meat under China’s Three New Foods regime and its national biomanufacturing policy, it identifies three ways in which China departs from the European model. The trigger for precaution shifts from scientific uncertainty established through assessment to a default exclusion that presupposes it, precautionary measures become open-ended rather than provisional, and the purpose of precaution widens from protecting health to steering industrial development. These departures form a coherent regulatory logic, termed here developmental precaution. Under this logic, the pace of regulatory opening tracks the readiness of a strategic industry rather than safety alone. China’s case shows that features long treated as intrinsic to the precautionary principle are in fact particular to the European tradition. This supports a more pluralist account of precautionary regulation.

Set against the sweeping deregulatory push unleashed by the Omnibus surge, this article advances a notion of non-regression attuned to the specificities of EU risk governance. It argues that non-regression so conceived must be normatively anchored in the precautionary principle and operationalised through proportionality. Through a precaution-inflected proportionality test, the normative commitments underpinning the precautionary principle can be translated into structured legal reasoning and leveraged via the principle’s inherent primacy of health and environmental protection. When applied to an extreme instance of pesticides deregulation – the abolition of mandatory re-approvals of pesticide substances – this test yields a disquieting picture of failure across the board, from suitability and necessity to proportionality stricto sensu. Most striking is the troubling imbalance between the deregulatory measure’s tenuous benefits and its substantial interference with the precautionary principle: in its current form, the measure would significantly erode the EU’s preventive regulatory epistemology based on sound science, along with potentially drastic and diffuse consequences for the Union’s high protection levels. While the notion of non-regression developed in this contribution may tame unfettered legislative backsliding of this sort, it is no failsafe against deregulation. Only the most extreme of cases may fall within its reach, leaving others to slip through the cracks of legislative discretion.

This article examines how investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals engage with the precautionary principle (PP) when environmental measures are challenged in the face of scientific uncertainty over ecological harm. An analysis of awards identifies three recurrent treatments: (i) strong risk prevention, (ii) flexible risk management, and (iii) nominal acknowledgement. Across these approaches, the PP fails to supply reviewable criteria for adjudication, resulting in inconsistent outcomes and limited doctrinal coherence. The article argues that the difficulty lies in the absence of a coherent account of the adjudicative function of the PP. Informed by systems theory and Karl-Heinz Ladeur’s concept of stop rules, the article develops a procedural account of the PP, under which the principle operates as a trigger for calibrated proportionality review and the reallocation of the burden of proof. On this view, the PP does not dissolve the precautionary paradox, but renders it adjudicatively workable, enabling tribunals to reach reasoned legal closure under epistemic uncertainty while preserving legal authority.

In its judgment Austria v Commission, the General Court dismissed Austria’s action for annulment of the Complementary Climate Delegated Act (CCDA), which classifies certain nuclear energy and fossil gas activities as taxonomy-eligible transitional activities under the EU Taxonomy Regulation. This judgment constitutes a landmark decision at several levels. Not only does this judgment impact the way the role of the Commission in the interpretation of the Taxonomy Regulation should be seen, it may also impact energy policy and security, financial markets and therefore society on several fronts. Given that the judgment confirms that nuclear energy and fossil gas activities may qualify as transitional activities contributing substantially to climate change mitigation, provided that no technologically and economically feasible low-carbon alternative is currently available, the traffic light for private investments in both sectors remains firmly green.

The European Union’s adoption of Omnibus legislation raises profound questions at the core of EU Environmental Law’s constitutional identity, where a high standard of environmental protection is a fundamental principle. This paper examines three Omnibus packages – the Chemicals, Food and Feed Safety, and Environment – and claims that, despite their portrayal as “simplification,” they serve as deregulatory tools that weaken the precautionary principle (Article 191(2) TFEU) and the environmental integration principle (Article 11 TFEU). The analysis of selected provisions shows that the Omnibus mechanism functions as a means to bypass constitutional safeguards, concealing reductions in protections that would normally require scrutiny and justification on proportionality grounds within narratives of administrative efficiency. The paper concludes with recommendations for more thorough assessments, a high burden of justification for reducing protective EU standards and increased parliamentary oversight. Ultimately, the question of whether Articles 11 and 191(2) TFEU still hold substantive power as enforceable limits on deregulation lies at the core of the EU’s environmental constitutional acquis and its broader claims to democratic legitimacy.

It is widely accepted that we ought to avoid taking excessive risks of causing gratuitous suffering. The practical implications of this truism, however, depend on how we understand what counts as an excessive risk. Precautionary frameworks help us decide when a risk exceeds the threshold for action, with the recent Birch et al. (2021) framework for assessing invertebrate sentience being one such example. The Birch et al. framework uses four neurobiological and four behavioural criteria to provide an evidence-based standard that can be used in determining when precautionary action to promote invertebrate welfare may be warranted. Our aim in this discussion paper is to provide a new motivation for the threshold approach that the Birch et al. framework represents while simultaneously identifying some possible revisions to the framework that can reduce false positives without abandoning the framework’s precautionary objectives.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide invoked the ‘precautionary principle’ to justify policies designed to protect public health. This principle holds that the state may act proactively to avert harm where there is factual uncertainty about that harm and the efficacy of policies proposed to mitigate it. Many of the policies introduced during the pandemic limited citizens’ constitutional rights. This article accordingly analyzes how the precautionary principle can be integrated into the proportionality doctrine courts use to assess the validity of rights limitations. As our case study, we take the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada and its globally influential Oakes proportionality test. When articulating the test in the past, the Court has grappled with the need to defer to laws that pursue important public objectives when the evidence underlying those policies is indeterminate. However, it has been criticized for not creating detailed guidelines for when judges should defer, which is said to breed arbitrary, results-oriented decision-making. We update this criticism by showing that it continues to apply to judgments of lower courts in Canada that have followed the Court’s proclamations to evaluate laws that limit constitutional rights to combat COVID-19. We then construct the requisite guidelines by drawing analogies with existing legal principles found in tort and criminal law. We argue that in contexts of factual uncertainty, the degree of judicial deference should vary according to the gravity and likelihood of the harm the government seeks to prevent. This risk-based framework restrains judicial subjectivity and illuminates how precaution should operate at each stage of the proportionality test. We further argue that it can assist courts across jurisdictions when incorporating precaution within proportionality because, unlike approaches to this problem offered by other comparative constitutional scholars, it is suitably modest and avoids excessive revision of accepted proportionality principles.

This article considers the application of the precautionary principle as understood in EU law to EU decision-making on geoengineering, in particular solar geoengineering. It finds that the situation is riddled with more complexities than first appears; (i) the principle is used to argue against research, even though more research is usually itself seen as precautionary response; (ii) the risks of research are claimed to lie in its political impact, whereas the principle is traditionally applied to direct physical risks; (iii) while there are legitimate precautionary arguments against geoengineering, it is itself put forward as a precautionary measure and there are precautionary arguments in favour too. Drawing on case law and scholarship we conclude that the precautionary principle can nevertheless be applied and will lead to a procedural requirement to do comprehensive reviews of relevant scientific knowledge before decision-making. This leaves wide – but not unbounded – discretion but may still be valuable in providing a frame for reasoned public debate. We also apply our findings to the recent expert reports on Solar Radiation Modification and show that they have failed to apply precaution correctly.

The authors critique the NY Declaration on Animal Consciousness, which does not denounce continued captivity and invasive research in the pursuit of animal consciousness markers. They argue that such research often increases animal suffering by accepting harmful practices. Instead, they propose a nonanthropocentric, ethical framework aligned with the Belmont Report’s principle of beneficence, advocating for noninvasive methods in natural habitats. This approach prioritizes animal well-being, recognizing and safeguarding the intrinsic value of all conscious beings.

A wide range of animal taxa, including vertebrates and invertebrates, are controlled or kept by humans. They may be used as pets, for recreation, sport and hobbies, as working animals, as producers of animal-derived (food) products or as biomedical models in research. There is a need for clear guidance on the treatment of animals, regardless of their phylogenetic distance from humans. Current animal welfare concepts, which emphasise animal sentience and the ability of animals to experience negative or positive mental states, are limited in scope to a small proportion of the animal kingdom, as the vast majority of species are (currently) thought to lack sentience. We discuss four options for addressing the question of which basic concept(s) could be used to derive guidelines for the treatment of animal species, sentient or non-sentient: (1) alternative concepts tailored to specific groups of species; (2) ‘welfare’ concepts not presupposing sentience; (3) the precautionary principle; or (4) the concept of animal integrity. Since questions regarding the appropriate treatment of animals, including species with a large phylogenetic distance from humans, have an ethical/moral dimension, we also address who counts morally and how much, and how animals should be treated given their moral status. We suggest that the concept of animal integrity, possibly complemented and extended by the concept of habitat/ecosystem integrity, is suitable for application to all species. However, a current concept of animal welfare should serve as the primary basis for guidance on how to treat species that are sentient and capable of experiencing emotions.

The development of the precautionary principle by the EU Courts has often been interpreted by scholars as inconsistent with another trend in EU risk regulation: one that is evidence-based and relies on impact assessment. This article argues that the two trends – precaution and regulatory impact assessment – are not mutually exclusive. Together they may, in fact, act as a procedural safeguard against discretionary decisions that have an impact on fundamental rights, especially under conditions of epistemic uncertainty. The article illustrates this claim by looking at the decisions to close schools in Ireland during the pandemic.