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ln March 2007, the German Parliament adopted the new Act on the Prevention and Remediation of Environmental Damages1 as well as amendments of the Federal Protection of Nature Act and the Water Resources Management Act. The legislative package is designed to implement the environmental liability directive. The Environmental Damages Act will enter into force on 15 October 2007. However, when in force, it will apply retroactively to all activities and omissions that occurred as from 30 April 2007, the date on which the deadline for transposing the directive into national law has lapsed. This somewhat odd legislative technique aims for ensuring that the requirements of the directive are complied with at least with respect to the remediation obligations. As regards preventive action, retroactive application is ruled out by the very nature of such action. The legislature was of the opinion that in this field existing German law is more or less already in compliance so that the formal gap of applicability does not count much. The Environmental Liability Directive introduces obligations of operators of particular professional activities to prevent immediately threatening ecological damage and remediate such damage that has already occurred. It covers certain categories of pure ecological damage, namely damage to protected species and habitats (biodiversity damage), damage to waters and - narrowly defined by reference to health risks - soil damage. The liability is in principie strict. It is limited to certain professional activities covered by Community regulation as listed in Annex III. This strict liability is supplemented by fa ult-based liability as regards biodiversity damage. ln assessing the implementation by the directive under the new German law, it has to be taken into account that Germany, like the other member states, already possesses quite comprehensive legislation both with respect to prevention and remediation of environmental harm. Preventive obligations exist in the many - at least nine - environmentallaws that cover the activities listed in the annex III of the directive. Remediation obligations are in particular set forth in media-related laws. The most important piece of legislation is the Federal Soil Protection Act. Although focusing on historie contamination which is not covered by the directive, it also contains preventive and remediation obligations with respect to soil damage - and this notion is defined more broadly than under the directive comprising not only risks presented to human health but also to groundwater. Moreover, the state protection of nature acts and water acts (which implement the relevant federal framework acts on nature conservation and water resources management)2 empower the competent authorities to require preventive and remediation action in case of (threatening) ecological or water damage, although they are much less specific than the Federal Soil Protection Act. The result of this state of national law is that the environmental liability directive, although certainly innovative in many respects, has not occupied virgin ground in Germany. Therefore, it has been one of the more difficult and hence controversial tasks in the legislative process to devise a mode of transposition that both cornplies with the directive's requirements and fits the directive into the existing body of environmental law.
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