The EU Legal Regime of Environmental Criminal Liability

摘要

The central issue of the European Union criminal law is to determine the appropriateness of an intervention which, without fully harmonizing the environmental regime unlawful attacks, must specify a minimal framework to facilitate the cooperation between the member states and to ensure an equivalent treatment in severe cases of ecological crime. And this because criminal law represents a number of advantages, primarily through its ethical dimension, recognizing that certain environmental assets have a social value that deserves greater protection, and, secondly, by its functions, repressive and preventive. The European environmental regulations in matter of older environment, both directives and regulations, is limited, most of the times, to provide that member states are obliged to take the "appropriate and necessary measures" of administrative and/or legislative nature for the transposition or, where appropriate, organizing the application of the European union legislative act in question. In a more recent document, there is stipulated that the member states must determine an appropriate and proportionate sanctions regime, possibly adding a requirement to be effective and dissuasive [1]. The article envisages the progress in adopting the Directive 2008/99/EC and the changes both in Community law/of the European Union and in terms of its implementation in the internal regulations of the member states.