The Environmental Law Service (EPS) is a non-governmental, non-profit, and non-political public interest law organization that gathers together lawyers and law students. We see public interest law (PIL below) to mean the participation of lawyers in activities that contribute to the protection of the public interest and human rights.

EPS works for free to defend the rights of citizens and the environment in the Czech Republic using the law and to influence pending legislation, the legal community, and law students in the direction of the public interest. EPS was founded in 1995 as a volunteer organization by students at the law school of Masaryk University in Brno. Since 1997, it has run on a professional basis.

In the course of our work, we try to achieve the following:

• effective protection for the rights of citizens and the associations they form to a good environment
• democratic, just, and open decision-making by state authorities
• corporate and governmental accountability
• better access to the courts for citizens who use the law to protect the public interest and human rights
• easy and quick access to information for citizens
• benefits for citizens, not narrow-interest lobbies, from new legislation
• better legal awareness among the public
• the involvement of lawyers and law school students in publicly beneficial activities
• the opening up of discussion on burning issues surrounding legal protection of public interests and human rights, and how to move towards their solution