Skip to content
OPINION (COM(2021)0851 – C90466/2021 – 2021/0422(COD))

On the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Protection of the environment through criminal law and replacing Directive 2008/99/EC

ENVI-AD-731606

Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety · Rapporteur: Sirpa Pietikäinen

Official HTML ↗ PDF DOCX
✦ In shortFull textProcedure & committee votes
✦ In short · AI summary of this text, generated 28 Sept 2026

Written by a language model from the full text only; every figure comes from the text. The paragraph links open the paragraph a statement rests on — check the text itself before relying on it.

The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety gives its opinion on the proposed directive on protecting the environment through criminal law, which would replace Directive 2008/99/EC. It says the current directive falls short and that environmental crime is growing and linked to organised crime. It asks for a wider scope, a lower threshold for investigations, and liability for negligence and for conduct covered by illegal authorisations. It wants aggravating circumstances and harm considered at sentencing, and sanctions for legal persons set at 15% of total worldwide turnover. It calls for prevention, due diligence and action against wilful blindness, and for stronger enforcement capacities, specialised courts and prosecutors, a stronger role for the European Public Prosecutor's Office, and public statistical data.

Committee position. The committee's rapporteur proposes to widen the scope of the directive, lower the threshold for investigations, cover negligence and illegal authorisations, treat serious harm as an aggravating circumstance, raise sanctions for legal persons to 15% of worldwide turnover, strengthen enforcement and make statistical data public.

Key points

  1. Directive 2008/99/EC falls short on implementation, is not in line with the development of EU environmental law, and leaves out large parts of that law and environmental destruction.
  2. The criminal justice response does not represent the situation on the ground; cross-border investigations and convictions have not grown substantially, and environmental crime is the fourth largest criminal activity and growing.
  3. Environmental crime threatens the European economy and businesses, creates an unlevel playing field, and is strongly linked to international organised crime.
  4. Environmental crime threatens the environment and human health, affecting air and water quality, contaminating land, harming wild species and damaging or destroying natural habitats.
  5. The rapporteur says the threshold for investigations is too high and must be strengthened, and the scope of the directive widened, especially for conduct committed in the awareness that it causes or is likely to cause human rights violations or substantial damage to the environment.
  6. The focus should be on prevention and precaution; operators have a duty to be aware and conduct proper due diligence, and the directive must tackle wilful blindness, the deliberate avoidance of knowledge of facts.
  7. Death or serious injury to any person, or substantial, serious, irreversible or long-lasting damage, should be aggravating circumstances considered in imposing a penalty, not elements of the crime that must be proven; simple negligence should be sufficient for criminal liability.
  8. The directive should cover conduct that is unlawful even if authorised by a competent authority, where that authorisation is illegal, for example a permit granted contrary to environmental laws.
  9. Harsher sanctions and stronger enforcement are urgently needed; the rapporteur supports sanctions for legal persons based on total worldwide turnover (Article 7(4)) but proposes raising the percentage to 15.
  10. Effective enforcement requires capacities, skills, knowledge and training along the full enforcement chain; the rapporteur supports raising the competencies of investigators, prosecutors and judges and creating specialised courts, public prosecutors and police.
  11. The role of the European Public Prosecutor's Office should be strengthened, especially where member states fail to act.
  12. The rapporteur supports improvements in data collection and statistics and proposes making statistical data public in addition to the consolidated reviews of the member states.

Who is affected

  • Operators and actors, who would have a duty to be aware and conduct proper due diligence and could not shield themselves through wilful blindness.
  • Legal persons, for whom sanctions would be based on total worldwide turnover, with the rapporteur proposing 15%.
  • Investigators, prosecutors and judges, whose awareness and competencies would be raised, with specialised courts, public prosecutors and police created.
  • Member states, whose consolidated reviews would be accompanied by public statistical data.

Figures and deadlines

  • Annual revenues from the illicit waste market in the EU are estimated between EUR 4 billion and EUR 15 billion.
  • Five out of nine planetary boundaries, safe limits for humanity, have been exceeded.
  • The rapporteur proposes to increase the percentage for sanctions for legal persons based on total worldwide turnover to 15.