There are various general environmental funds at State level which are in theory or practice available to use by States to address environmental liabilities where there is a default by an operator. These may be funded from general taxation or levies targeted on polluting practices and may also have other purposes such as funding environmental initiatives generally.
These are considered distinct from financial provisions by way of a ‘mutual fund or pool’, which are much more targeted instruments in terms of both their funding (by operators who have the specific obligations and liabilities) and their uses (generally only as a fall-back to address defaults by those operators).
These types of general environmental funds are not considered further here.
At EU level, the EU Solidarity Fund was established in 2002 following severe flooding in Austria, the Czech Republic, France and Germany. The focus of the fund is to enable the EU ‘to respond [to a major natural disaster] in a rapid, efficient and flexible manner’. With the sole exception of damage from the Prestige, however, the fund has not provided, and does not provide, funding for a man-made disaster. Further, the EU Solidarity Fund does not provide funding if the damage is insurable.
The EU Commission published a report in 2013 on a Study to explore the feasibility of creating a fund to cover environmental liability and losses occurring from industrial accidents.