Invited to speak at a round table on ‘Strengthening environmental Rule of law through effective fight against environmental crime’, organised on Wednesday 7 June as part of EU Green Week 2023 in Brussels, Frederik Hafen, Environmental Democracy Policy Officer at the NGO European Environmental Bureau (EEB), outlined the role of NGOs and civil society in this area.
According to Mr Hafen, they compensate for “the lack of detection and expertise of local law enforcement agencies on the ground”. He also raised concerns about whether civil society could act on behalf of the victims of environmental crimes, whether the victims were the environment itself or the human beings affected.
Another major challenge mentioned by the expert concerns the difficulties encountered by civil society once environmental crimes have been detected. On this point, “a lot of frustration arises”, according to Frederik Hafen, when little concrete action is taken.
Problems with the enforcement chain and the prosecution of environmental offences would hamper “effective prosecutions”, argued the EEB’s head of environmental democracy policy. It would therefore be crucial to overcome these obstacles to ensure adequate environmental justice.
Mr Hafen also emphasised the role of civil society as judge in assessing acts considered so serious that they should be dealt with under criminal law. This assessment is based on the seriousness of the damage caused to the environment and to human health. He therefore called for “a paradigm shift to recognise these values in our moral frameworks, both nationally and internationally”. He believes that the health of ecosystems, the protection of pollinators and a healthy environment should be valued and integrated into our approach to environmental crime.
He also explained the need to provide prosecutors with the appropriate tools to effectively prosecute environmental crimes. He welcomed the Commission’s proposal, but also highlighted a number of shortcomings that needed to be addressed, in particular with regard to the autonomous definition of environmental crimes.
He also stressed the importance of cooperation at both national and international level in the fight against environmental crime. He called for the mandate of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office to be extended, before noting that cooperation between national authorities was sometimes hampered by delays and communication difficulties, which was detrimental to the fight against cross-border environmental crime.
Finally, Mr Hafen highlighted a paradoxical aspect of environmental crime. He mentioned cases where criminal law had been used against environmental rights activists who were trying to protect the environment. In his view, this underlines once again the importance of “political will”. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)