See you in Court | July 31, 2025
Mobilisation for the Environment, Greenpeace NL and Milieudefensie recently won a landmark case against the nature permit (habitats and birds directive) of Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.
Summary
This is a call for information from the legal team that has been working on the case for the past two years. Our team aims to force the government to scale down the biggest Dutch airport. That will take work, also beyond this case. Future legal procedures will be decisive on the a maximum yearly flight procedures determine the maximum number of flights allowed.
We ask you for information about airports in your country that can help us reduce this maximum as much as possible.
Introduction
The number of flights Schiphol can handle is determined in the environmental assessment. Schiphol uses two cut-off limits in its calculations. Without these cut-off limits, the effect per flight is greater, meaning fewer flights are allowed. Therefore, questioning these cut-off limits is an important aspect of the procedures.
We ask you to provide studies, assessments, and calculations regarding other airports in the European Union. If another airport does not use the same cut-off limits, this could convince the Dutch Supreme Court to refer the case to the European Court of Justice.
What studies are we looking for
Our team can use any environmental studies on any airport in the European Union. These could be environmental impact assessments, appropriate assessments under the Habitats or Birds Directive, or for example research for air quality regulations.
We hope to at least gather information on the 20 biggest airports in the EU.
How to send information
You can send us a link if such studies are available online. Alternatively, you can send us PDF files via file transfer if the studies are not publicly available. Please reach out before August 31 at [email protected].
We will review the studies ourselves to compare them with the research in our case. You can forward the studies without additional explanation, but please clearly indicate which airport the documents pertain to.
We will share a brief summary of our findings with everyone who participated.
Other technical questions
If you have experience working on these topics, you are welcome to analyze documents you file with us yourself and provide us with more information.
Our team is looking for information about two cut-off limits.
Firstly, there is a cut-off limit for emissions at 3,000 feet. Following an ICAO guideline on air quality, Schiphol disregards aircraft emissions above 3,000 feet. Our legal team argues that emissions above 3,000 feet can rain out, leading to acidification of nature reserves. This happens without affecting air quality since the pollutants go straight to the ground. Our legal team is thus looking for environmental studies that include emissions above 3,000 feet.
Secondly, the official Dutch dispersion model for pollutants uses a cut-off at 25 km from a source (flight route). Our legal team argues that 500,000 aircraft movements can still have a significant impact at greater distances. Therefore, we are looking for environmental studies that examine effects beyond 25 km from the source location. Note that the source location is at a modelled flight route, not at the airport itself.
If you can provide us with detailed information and references on either of these cut-offs, that is much appreciated.
We thank you in advance!