In its opinion Improving environmental protection through criminal law, adopted at its March plenary session, the EESC suggested the EU should impose criminal sanctions on as many environmental offences as possible.

The report looked into the proposed new EU Environmental Crime Directive (ECD) and suggested practical ways to make it truly effective, proportionate and dissuasive.

The EESC welcomed the extension of the list of environmental criminal offences from nine to eighteen, but believes the directive should cover as many types of environmental offence as possible. It is also of the view that the maximum limits for sanctions should be substantially higher for these to be effective, proportionate and dissuasive.

A further proposal made in the report is for environmental crimes to be under the jurisdiction of the European Public Prosecutor's Office, since many of them are known to have links to organised crime.

The EESC is also calling for the crime of ecocide to be inscribed in the directive, and to be defined as "an unlawful or wanton act committed in the full knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment". The EESC notes that armed conflicts are practically always, by definition, ecocides. 

Environmental crime is the fourth most lucrative crime category globally and is on the increase in the EU. While cross-border convictions have not grown substantially, the rate of environmental crimes committed in Europe has gone up.
The EESC stresses that overhauling the directive is not enough. One of the weaknesses flagged up in assessments of the current directive is implementation in the Member States. The EESC therefore highlights the need to strengthen the enforcement chain and suggests EU Member States should set up specialised police forces, prosecutors, judges and courts in the area of environmental crime.

The 2008 Environmental Crime Directive is the main binding instrument in place in the EU to tackle environmental crime. An evaluation conducted in 2019 and 2020 showed that it did not have much effect on the ground. Over the past decade, the number of environmental crime cases successfully investigated and sentenced has remained low, the sanctions imposed were insufficiently dissuasive and there has been no systematic cross-border cooperation. Following the evaluation, the Commission decided to replace it with a new EU Directive. (mr)