EMLA is J&E’s seat in Hungary. Dr Csaba Kiss of EMLA is J&E’s current president.

EMLA was founded in 1992 and has been providing pro bono legal assistance since 1994. In the last ten years EMLA has become a significant performer in the field of environmental protection in Hungary.

To date, EMLA has had a total of over four-hundred and fifty environmental cases and the same number of projects, as well as over one-hundred interviews and presentations (some related to cases and others which provided general information). Cases managed by EMLA attorneys include large scale national issues (construction of highways or hazardous waste incinerators) as well as local community environmental concerns, such as conservation of local wetlands, protection against noise and air pollution by road traffic and by shopping centers.

Cases represented by EMLA lawyers are numerous, but a few examples to mention are claiming compensation for loss of neighboring property values and imposing the precautionary principle on telecommunications companies in lawsuits against mobile telephone antennas, representation of public protests against the M0 bypass highway constructions close to densely inhabited areas around Budapest, litigation against the loss of green space on the famous Margaret Island in the heart of Budapest, support of civil movement to limit heavy truck traffic within settlements such as the town of Dabas, legal advice to a municipality fighting an improperly constructed old landfill in the village of Csorog, lawsuits against power generator investments in Natura 2000 areas.

Examples of projects managed by EMLA are technical support to the Hungarian Government (Ministry of Environment) in transposing EU directives into the national legal system (the Water Framework Directive, the EIS and SEA directives, the Access to Information Directive), writing the legal component for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences of the Hungarian research VAHAVA on national actions against climate change, running a non-profit law development programme subsidized by the Trust Fund, and analyzing Corporate Social Responsibility in Hungary as a partner organization of a 6-New Member State joint project financed by DG Social.