For years, climate litigation seemed like a symbolic battle: appeals destined to make noise rather than change anything. Today that narrative is outdated. In a series of landmark rulings, European courts have established that states not only can, but must revise public policies that violate environmental law and fundamental rights. And while the first landmark cases concerned emissions and air quality, the latest wave of litigation strikes at the heart of a system that is often overlooked yet decisive: the food system.
The Food System on Trial
The way we produce food is one of the main drivers of the ecological crisis. According to the FAO, agri-food systems are responsible for approximately one third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and livestock farming represents a dominant share, through methane, deforestation, and water and soil pollution. Yet public policies continue to pull in the opposite direction.
This is clearly shown by the Food Forward Europe report, “Future-Proofing the CAP: Rebalancing EU Subsidies Toward Plant-Based Production” (April 2026): the Common Agricultural Policy — one third of the European Union’s budget, over 55 billion euros per year — directs the overwhelming majority of subsidies to livestock farming and feed-dependent systems, while underinvesting in plant proteins for human consumption. The report does not merely denounce the inconsistency between public spending and climate, environmental, and animal welfare objectives: it identifies a growing legal risk, that is, an ever-increasing exposure of the CAP to judicial scrutiny, and proposes reallocating 20% of support towards plant-based production (an executive summary is available here, in English). The most recent rulings demonstrate that this risk is not theoretical.
Spain: Livestock Pollution Is a Human Rights Violation
In the comarca of A Limia, in Galicia, hundreds of intensive pig and poultry farms have for years discharged their effluents into the As Conchas reservoir, rendering the water unusable and making daily life, according to residents, “unliveable.” In March 2025, seven inhabitants of the village of As Conchas, together with the local residents’ association and consumer federation CECU, supported by ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth Spain, took the Xunta de Galicia and the Miño-Sil river basin authority to court.
On 11 July 2025, the High Court of Justice of Galicia issued a landmark ruling: the inaction of authorities in the face of pollution from intensive livestock farming violates the fundamental rights of residents — the right to life, to private and family life, to property, and to an adequate environment — under the Spanish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. This is the first time a European court has examined the impact of industrial animal farming on water resources from a human rights perspective. The Court ordered the authorities to take all necessary measures to halt the pollution and restore the reservoir, awarding the claimants compensation of up to €30,000 each.
The authorities appealed, but on 13 February 2026 the Spanish Supreme Court declared their appeals inadmissible, making the ruling final and enforceable. A now-established precedent: the protection of fundamental rights prevails when industrial livestock farming endangers the health, lives, and environment of communities.
France: The CAP Before the EU Court of Justice
While the Spanish case targets individual farms, the French one aims directly at the mechanism that funds them. In 2022, ClientEarth and the Collectif Nourrir had asked the European Commission to review its approval of the French CAP National Strategic Plan — which unlocks over 9 billion euros per year in subsidies — arguing that it did not comply with binding climate and nature objectives. The Commission had refused.
On 29 October 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in favour of the NGOs: the Commission was wrong to approve the French plan, which violated the environmental “conditionality” requirements (in particular on crop rotation). It is the first time that civil society has won before EU judges by challenging an EU institution’s failure to comply with environmental law. The Court annulled the Commission’s decision, obliging it to re-examine the plan’s compatibility with EU legislation. This is an extremely powerful signal, coming precisely as the 2028–2035 CAP is being negotiated.
The Precedents That Paved the Way
These successes did not emerge from nowhere. They rest on three landmark rulings that have redefined the boundaries of environmental litigation.
Urgenda v. the Netherlands (2015–2019) is the founding case: on 20 December 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court confirmed the State’s obligation to reduce emissions by at least 25% by 2020 compared to 1990, in the name of its human rights obligations. It was the first time a court had imposed a concrete climate target on a government, and the Netherlands subsequently met that threshold.
In Ireland, Friends of the Irish Environment v. the Government (the so-called “Climate Case Ireland”) led, on 31 July 2020, to the Supreme Court annulling the national mitigation plan drawn up by the government, deemed too “vague” and “aspirational” to explain how Ireland would achieve its 2050 decarbonisation targets.
In the United Kingdom, finally, ClientEarth v. the British Government (2015-2018) demonstrated that it is possible to win multiple times in a row: following the 2015 Supreme Court ruling on illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide, ClientEarth repeatedly took the government to court, forcing it to rewrite its air quality plans and to tackle diesel pollution.
A Widening Front
Spain and France are not isolated cases. In the Netherlands, following the landmark nitrogen jurisprudence, Greenpeace launched civil action in 2023 against the State: in June 2024, the Hague District Court recognised that nitrogen-sensitive habitats are in poor condition and that, without adequate measures, the State is in breach of EU law. It is a mosaic of cases that, taken together, are redrawing the relationship between intensive agriculture and the law. And Italy is fully part of it.
Italy: Lake Vico and Intensive Hazelnut Groves
The most emblematic Italian case is that of Lake Vico, in northern Lazio. Its waters, once among the purest in Italy and still used for human consumption by the municipalities of Caprarola and Ronciglione, are periodically turned red by algal blooms: the effect of excess nutrients caused by fertilisers from the intensive hazelnut groves surrounding the lake. The hazelnut monoculture, linked to the confectionery supply chain, covers more than 21,700 hectares in the area and reaches right to the shores of a protected Natura 2000 site.
In 2022, ClientEarth and Lipu sued the Lazio Region, challenging the failure to designate the area as a “nitrate vulnerable zone” (a designation that would trigger stricter rules on fertiliser use) and the inertia in protecting a legally protected habitat from unsustainable agriculture. In February 2023, the Lazio Regional Administrative Court ruled in favour of the claimants on the nitrates issue, ordering the Region to take a formal position. And in May 2024, the Council of State upheld the appeal, recognising the inertia of the competent authorities and ordering the Region to exercise its substitute powers to ensure the protection of drinking water.
Lake Vico is not an exception, but the tip of a systemic problem. Italy has been subject to European infringement proceedings over the Nitrates Directive for years: in February 2023, the Commission sent Rome a reasoned opinion, the penultimate step before referral to the Court of Justice, for failing to adequately designate vulnerable zones and for insufficient measures against agricultural water pollution. Here too, legal action by citizens and NGOs runs in parallel with pressure from European institutions, in the same direction: forcing administrations to do what the law already requires.
From Defence to Offence: Transforming the Food System
Read together, these cases tell a clear story of direction. Environmental litigation started with climate and air, but is now arriving in force at food: at livestock farms polluting groundwater, at subsidies rewarding the most harmful practices, at institutions that turn a blind eye. And every victory expands the space for the next one.
If judges can compel the Commission to re-examine the French CAP and a Supreme Court can order authorities to restore a reservoir poisoned by livestock farming, then Food Forward Europe‘s proposal to rebalance European subsidies towards plant-based production is not just a good idea but the rational response to a system that is already legally unsustainable. Reforming the CAP before courts dismantle it piece by piece, and directing public money towards healthy, sustainable, plant-based food means getting ahead of the future.
Environmental justice has learned to win. The next frontier is the plate.
