The implementation of the Aarhus Convention’s guarantees concerning public participation and access to justice has been far from straight-forward in rights-based legal systems. For Austria, the weaknesses and deficits of the way it implemented this Convention were repeatedly highlighted by both the Aarhus treaty bodies and the European Commission. However, only after the recent findings of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the Protect case did the Austrian legislator take further steps to implement the Convention’s guarantees within the domestic legal system. The present contribution looks at these legislative efforts and assesses them in view of the Convention. It concludes that while the new laws have brought some positive changes, the Austrian legislator has missed the opportunity to finally give full effect to the Aarhus Convention.