By Pietro Lombardi
MADRID (Reuters) -The European Court of Justice on Friday dealt a blow to environmental groups trying to stop wind farms from being built in Spain’s northwestern Galicia region, in a ruling affecting billions of euros of investment.
Companies developing wind farms in Galicia and regional authorities welcomed the decision, which is a setback to opponents’ strategy of using the courts to block plans they say encroach on the environment and the lives of local people.
The court rejected the environmentalists’ argument that the public’s rights to consultation had been violated.
The decision affects dozens of planned wind projects that were approved by the regional government and then halted by the highest regional court after locals and environmental groups filed hundreds of lawsuits.
Carmen Bouso from the regional government’s environment department said the court’s decision “clearly and emphatically supports” the procedures used to approve wind energy projects and the government’s full respect of the public’s rights to participate in the process.
She urged regional judges to resume their consideration of lawsuits that they had put on hold pending the ruling of the European court.
The AEE, a Spanish wind industry group, welcomed the ruling as “a key step toward restoring legal certainty” in the region.
“Now it’s time to act quickly and responsibly so that the projects that have been stalled until now can resume operations as soon as possible,” AEE General Director Juan Virgilio Marquez said.
Galician activist group Adega, a leading opponent of wind projects in the region, said the ruling was disappointing and went “against the right to real and effective public participation”.
The group vowed to keep on fighting and said it believed other legal issues beyond the scope of Friday’s ruling meant many wind projects would still not be able to proceed.
There are 92 wind farms targeted by legal actions in Galicia, 86 of which have been halted before construction started, according to data provided by regional authorities. They involve an estimated investment of 3 billion euros ($3.42 billion) and have a total planned capacity of almost 2.5 gigawatts (GW).
($1 = 0.8762 euros)
(Reporting by Pietro Lombardi and Inti Landauro; Editing by David Latona, Andrei Khalip and Helen Popper)
