In the absence of an overall agreement, EU justice ministers reached a partial agreement on the environmental crime directive on Thursday 9 June. They agreed on the definitions of environmental criminal offences and will return to the issue of minimum penalties for these under the Czech Presidency of the EU Council.
However, they did have a round table discussion on the subject, which clarified the different positions on sanctions for these environmental crimes.
The text adopted concerns Articles 2, 3 and 4 of the Directive, which define what is to be treated as a criminal offence by the Member States. This includes, among others: - the discharge, emission of materials, substances or radiation into the air, soil or water which may cause serious injury or death, or severe damage to the quality of water, air or soil; - the placing on the market of products that enable the above-mentioned actions; - behaviour causing deterioration of species’ habitat; - illegal timber trafficking; - illegal recycling of polluting ships. Offences listed in the regulation, and committed without intent, i.e. “at least grossly negligent” are also covered.
Work is still needed to reach a qualified majority on the rest of the text, which mainly concerns the minimum sentences to be applied in the case of these offences. The EU Council is divided on having minimum penalties for natural or legal persons who have committed an offence without intent, or who have not caused serious consequences such as death.
EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders stressed the need for strong sanctions to effectively combat environmental crime. Addressing the ministers during the debate, he said that “a provision that would allow the introduction of administrative sanctions against natural persons as an alternative to criminal sanctions would clearly undermine the objectives of the proposal”.
In addition, several ministers have indicated that they do not agree with indexing the amount of fines for legal persons to the turnover of companies. For Didier Reynders, however, this is necessary. There is, in his view, “a great divergence between the levels of sanctions available in the Member States”, which are sometimes too low to be a deterrent. “That is why high penalty thresholds must be applicable throughout the Union, and this also means that companies’ turnover must be taken into account in order to impose sufficiently dissuasive fines”, he added. ‘(Original version in French by Léa Marchal)