From Sustainable Development to Ecological Integrity: sparse Signals of a Comprehensive Paradigm Shift in EU and Italian Environmental Law

Degradation of ecosystems and climate change are the hallmark of the so-called Anthropocene Epoch. In the legal sphere, this situation is questioning the appropriateness of one of the EU’s overarching objectives, namely sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to discuss its timeliness in the ecological transition process enhanced by the Green Deal and to explore the alternative concept of “ecological integrity”, on the basis of which environmental protection is conceived as a prerequisite for any socio-economic development. The study therefore analyses two recent EU legal developments – the DNSH principle and the EU Nature Restoration Law – in order to demonstrate how the objective of ecological integrity is already being applied, albeit to a certain extent, in the EU.