Environmental Protection: A Fundamental Right or a Social Objective? Comparative Constitutional Overview

Abstract

The protection of the environment is at the center of the current political debate in Europe and more widely, since the protection of human health is inevitably linked to the health of the environment. The relationship between environmental pollution and human health has been scientifically proven. The inclusion of environmental protection as a fundamental right in the Constitution on the one hand is very important because it affects the orientation and direction of the work of the parliament in relation to environmental policies in the future, while on the other hand it prevents the hegemony of the parliamentary majority in the implementation of some production policies to the detriment of the environment and therefore to the detriment of the health of the country's citizens. Initially, in this paper, the author will focus on the concept and importance of environmental protection, to continue later with the sources of environmental law at the international and national level. In this work, the question that was asked at the beginning of the time will be answered, that is, if the protection of the environment is a right that we can demand its respect in court or simply a social objective that the state wants to realize within its possibilities. I am sure that in the time of globalization, the modern lawyer cannot ignore the comparative analysis, since it now constitutes an essential analytical point of view for it. For this reason, the author will analyze environmental law in the comparative dimension, based mainly on the Constitutions of the countries of the European Union, an organization in which Albania wants to join in the not too distant future. The comparative method is a necessary tool to better understand the complexities arising from the globalization of law, which is characterized by the intermingling of different social, political and economic interests.

Received: 29 June 2024 / Accepted: 21 July 2024 / Published: 29 July 2024