From what the legal world does for environmental protection to what environmental protection does for the legal world – considerations in a climate of metamorphosis in the European legal framework

Abstract

The present analysis focuses on the latest work by Ulrich Beck – The Metamorphosis of the World: How Climate Change is Transforming Our Concept of the World. Therein the Author explains that the world is undergoing a process of metamorphosis that challenges our way of being in the world, of thinking about the world and of imagining and practicing politics. Although Ulrich Beck’s work mainly focuses on climate change as an agent of this process of metamorphosis, we propose, on the one hand, to consider environmental protection as the scope of analysis and, on the other hand, to limit the frame of reference to the legal protection of the environment within the framework of European Union law. The objective is to propose for reflection some issues concerning the interconnections between the legal protection of the environment and the regulation of economic relations within the framework of the European internal market, as well as its impact on the democratic design in the European context.