Lu Jun, President of Zhaotong Intermediate People’s Court of Yunnan Province, and Li Enpeng, Vice President of the First People’s Court of Zhaotong Intermediate People’s Court of Yunnan Province, were invited to give lectures on “Theory and Practice of Judicial Trial of Environmental Public Interest Litigation Cases”

At 10:00 on December 18, 2020, invited by the part-time lawyer of Shanghai Zhonghua Law Firm and Professor Zhang Zitai of the Law School of Fudan University, Lu Jun, President of the Zhaotong Intermediate People’s Court in Yunnan Province, and Li Enpeng, Vice President of the First Civil Division of the Zhaotong Intermediate People’s Court in Yunnan Province, as the keynote speakers, the lecture “Theory and Practice of Judicial Trial of Environmental Public Interest Litigation Cases” was held in the 309 seminar room of the Law Building of Fudan University, The lecture was presided over by Li Chuanxuan, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of the Law School of Fudan University, and attended by Zhang Yeshi, a lawyer of Shanghai Zhonghua Law Firm, Tao Lei, an associate professor of the Law School of Fudan University, and doctoral and graduate students of environmental law.

First of all, there is a lack of unified regulation on the management of funds for ecological environment restoration in China. Who will manage the compensation funds for ecological environment damage? How? In practice, there are government financial fund management, public welfare foundation management, public trust management and other practices, but there is a lack of unified standards. The “Kunming Model” can be used for reference here. The Interim Measures for the Management of the Special Fund for Environmental Public Interest Litigation Relief in Kunming issued by the Kunming Municipal Government has established an independent “special fund account for relief” of environmental public interest litigation in Kunming, appointed a fund manager, stipulated the relief object of the special relief fund, the limit of the relief fund applied for, and the procedure for the use of the fund, which not only realizes the entry and exit of the account Moreover, it has realized the goal of earmarking funds for specific purposes and effectively used the funds for the cause of ecological environment restoration.

Secondly, the status of procuratorial organs in environmental public interest litigation is controversial. As the only plaintiff subject who can bring environmental civil and administrative public interest litigation at the same time, the procuratorial organ needs to distinguish the functions of these two roles to prevent the occurrence of the situation that the procuratorial organ is both an athlete and a referee. Therefore, in the environmental administrative public interest litigation, the role of the procuratorial organ as the “legal supervision organ” is more prominent, while in the environmental civil public interest litigation, the position of the procuratorial organ as the “plaintiff” needs to be emphasized.

Moreover, Article 25 of the Administrative Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China and Article 55 of the Civil Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China clearly stipulate that the procuratorial organs should carry out public interest litigation in the fields of ecological environment and resource protection, food and drug safety, protection of state-owned property, transfer of state-owned land use rights, etc. How to determine the extension of public interest litigation cases? Although “waiting” here is a kind of legislative technology, it should be understood as “waiting inside”. The Supreme Law and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate have also issued judicial interpretations related to public interest litigation, but they are relatively principled. The legal rules of public interest litigation are also in the process of constant exploration, which requires constant experience and accumulation. These problems are the difficulties we face in hearing public interest litigation cases, for your research and discussion.

Later, all the participants in the lecture had a warm exchange and discussion on the content of the lecture, and put forward their own views and opinions on this topic. The enthusiasm of everyone’s interaction remained unchanged until the end of the lecture. Lawyer Zhang Zitai expressed his thanks to the two speakers, and looked forward to the next visit and lecture of President Lu Jun and President Li Enpeng.