Ministry of Justice tries to lower cost of environment-related public interest litigation

The Ministry of Justice recently released a list of judicial expertise institutions which won't charge fees before conducting authentication of environmental damage involved in public interest litigation initiated by procuratorate organs.

The list contains a total of 58 judicial expertise institutions based in 27 provincial regions, including, among others, Tianjin, Hebei province and Shanxi province.

The development of the list is part of the ministry's effort to address the issue of high judicial authentication fees for public interest litigation initiated by procuratorate organs.

The ministry is also working on building a system without pre-authentication fee-charging for the said litigation.

In the future, the ministry will strengthen its cooperation with other departments to catalogue fee charges for such authentications in an effort to help local authorities develop their charging standards.