Ten Authorities Propose the "Forensic Testing First and Testing Fee Payment Later" Mechanism for Public-interest Lawsuits Against Damage to Ecological Environment
Recently, ten authorities, including the Supreme People's Procuratorate ("SPP"), have jointly issued the Opinions on Enhancing Collaboration and Cooperation in Procuratorial Public-interest Lawsuits to Legally Win the Tough Battle of Preventing and Controlling Pollution (the "Opinions").
Encompassing 21 articles, the Opinions will serve as a clear specification for matters in eight aspects, including "referral of clues", "jurisdiction for case establishment", "investigations to collect evidence", "judicial forensic tests", "pre-trial procedures", "filing of lawsuits", "routine liaison" and "personnel exchange", and provide a powerful institutional guarantee for efforts in handling public-interest lawsuits according to law and joint efforts in winning the tough battle of preventing and controlling pollution. With regard to investigations to collect evidence, among others, the Opinions stress the need to establish the communication and coordination mechanism, adding that clues on significant and sensitive cases shall be reported in a timely fashion to organs at a higher level than the supervised administrative law enforcement agencies. As for judicial forensic tests, the Opinions note that efforts shall be made to explore and improve the mechanisms to manage the payment for forensic testing and to guarantee and the forensic testing expenditure, calling for consultations with relevant forensic testing agencies to explore the possibility of removing the requirement on procuratorial organs to pay in advance fees for forensic tests, when they file public-interest suit against damage to ecological environment and instead, letting losing parties bear and pay such fees after courts have rendered judgments.