MPs to Debate Doubling Court Deadline for Environment Appeals

Deadline rules for environment appeals are up for debate on Tuesday, with MPs weighing a change that would double the court challenge window from 30 days to 60.

Parliament will take up a draft amendment to paragraph (a) of Article 113 of the Environment Law (Law No. 7 of 2022), prepared from a legislative proposal first put forward by MPs.

The current wording gives any concerned party 30 days from notification of an administrative decision, issued under the Environment Law and its implementing decisions, to file a grievance with the council. The administration must decide the grievance within 30 days and notify the complainant of the outcome; if there is no reply by the end of that period, it is treated as an implied refusal.

After a refusal, the complainant has 30 days to go to the competent court, counted from the date they are notified of the refusal, or from the end of the decision period if no notification is given.

Under the draft law, those first two 30-day steps would stay as they are. The change comes at the last stage: the time limit for taking a rejected grievance to court would rise to 60 days.

Supporters say the longer window would give people more time to study a decision before taking legal action. They also say a 60-day period matches the general approach in comparable laws dealing with appeals against administrative decisions.

The government, in an opinion memorandum attached to the draft, asked MPs to think again. It said Article 113 works as a single chain and already allows up to 90 days across the full process: 30 days to submit the grievance, 30 days for the administration to decide it, then 30 days to file the court case after a refusal.

It also argued that keeping the court deadline at 30 days helps preserve legal certainty. The memorandum said environment-related decisions often need speed because they deal with pollution and harm to natural resources, and it pointed to the expedited handling of environment cases in other jurisdictions, naming the UAE and Egypt.

The government also cited other Bahraini laws that use a 30-day period for challenging a refusal in court, including legislation on time-share in accommodation units, rules covering the registration and safety of small vessels, excise tax, the regulation of the real estate sector, and the extraction and sale of marine sand.

The Ministry of Oil and Environment and the Supreme Council for Environment both said they value the aims behind the draft, but agreed with the government’s view that the current text should remain unchanged.

Despite that, Parliament’s Public Utilities and Environment Committee backed the draft in principle. The committee also recommended amending the draft’s title so it states plainly that the change relates to paragraph (a) of Article 113.

The draft law consists of a preamble and two articles. Article One replaces the relevant text in Article 113, while Article Two assigns implementation to the Prime Minister and ministers, each within their remit, and states that the law would take effect the day after it is published in the Official Gazette.