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ABSTRACT:This paper discusses whether the principles of effective judicial protection and full effectiveness of Community law require national courts to give standing to pressure groups seeking to litigate diffuse interests. The paper explores the relevant issues through the lens of a hypothetical case in which an environmental organization seeks to challenge a Member State's failure to comply with a wildlife protection directive. The paper shows that, on the one hand, the organization may adduce strong empirical evidence that denying it access to court will leave violations of the directive unremedied and adduce a sound doctrinal argument that, in light of this "enforcement deficit", it has the right to enforce the directive as a surrogate of its beneficiaries. On the other hand, the paper shows that Member States have experimented with alternative methods of enforcing laws implicating diffuse interests, and Community law leaves Member States free to choose among alternative (effective) methods of enforcing Community rights. Further, the paper argues that interfering with national rules of associational standing would thrust the European Court in the middle of important, historically rooted national policy concerns and require the Court to devise from scratch a European doctrine of associational standing to replace the divergent (and fluctuating) approaches followed by the Member States. The paper concludes with a suggestion to resolve this tension through enrollment of national judges in the gradual development of a European "common law" of associational standing