Die Monetarisierung ökologischer Schäden in einer europäischen Haftungsregelung: Anmerkungen zur Schadensbewertung angesichts der Erfahrungen in den USA

Because the existing environmental liability regimes in Europe do not deal with environmental damage as such, e.g. damages to biodiversity, the European Commission has recently proposed a Directive on Environmental Liability. One crucial aspect of the design of the directive is whether the damage should be compensated in monetary terms or based on natural restoration and how the size of the damage should be calculated. The current proposal is mainly based on the US Oil Pollution Act (OPA), which largely abandoned the concept of monetary compensation. Instead, it relies on a resource-based compensation and mainly measures the cost of compensatory restoration. This article discusses whether this is acceptable from an economic point of view or whether monetary valuation should be used to a larger extent. Copyright Verein für Socialpolitik und Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2005