C.M. Billiet (ed.), K. Dimec, K. Weissová, M. Clément, F. Nési, W. Welke, A. Wüst, J. Cekanovskis, E. Van Die & L. Giron Conde, Sanctioning environmental crime: prosecution and judicial practice (LIFE-ENPE Project LIFE14 GIE/UL/000043), London, ENPE, 2018, 80 p.
This report is the outcome of collaborative reflection and writing process. Prosecutors and judges from eight EU member states discussed three topics throughout one year: December 2016 – December 2017. These topics were: (1) problems, trends and good practices observed in the actual prosecution and sanctioning practice in their countries; (2) proportionality in prosecution and sanctioning decisions; (3) training priorities with regard to environmental crime.
Formal recommendations made by the working group include the following ones.
- Further training of prosecutors and judges remains crucial. The training must above all aim to create knowledge and understanding of environmental crime and the harm it causes/can cause.
- Environmental law enforcement policy at EU level and in the member states has to build on a public law enforcement vision, namely a vision that encompasses the criminal as well as the administrative sanctioning tracks and approaches them as one enforcement system, creating systemic coherence.
- Comprehensive EU guidelines must be developed on good practices regarding the design of environmental law enforcement legislation in the member states. These guidelines have to cover the full enforcement chain, from the monitoring of compliance to the implementation of sanctions imposed. The guidelines also have to cover the sanctioning toolkits to be provided.
The working group was created as part of a LIFE+ project, where the European Network of Environmental Prosecutors (https://www.environmentalprosecutors.eu/ ) collaborates with the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment (https://www.eufje.org/index.php?lang=en ).
Full publication here.
See also https://www.environmentalprosecutors.eu/cross-cutting