EU’s Environmental Crime Directive

The damage to our environment is a growing concern of environmental organizations and regulatory authorities around the world. Toxic substances, harmful emissions, poor waste management, and unsustainable operations are corrupting our environment, polluting soil, water, air, plants, and animals. 

To tackle the ongoing threat to our planet, crimes against the environment are being more defined, holding people and businesses accountable for their unsustainable practices. Environmental crimes are joining a host of other relevant laws, such as wildlife protection or crimes against species and their habitats, and the illegal shipment, trading, and disposal of toxic waste or substances. Highly damaging yet hard to identify, environmental crimes often go unpunished. 

Introducing the EU’s Environmental Crime Directive (ECD), with the aim of addressing environmental crimes through national enforcement.

Environmental crime in Europe

In Europe, the Commission recognizes that environmental crime is the fourth largest organized crime activity, with an annual growth rate of 5–7%. It also notes that the EU loses approximately EUR 80–230 billion per year due to environmental crime cases. Environmental crime is lucrative, and previous penalties, sanctions, and monitoring haven’t been strict enough to dissuade criminals. 

In a 2022 threat assessment report by Europol (the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation), they identified the following findings on environmental crime in Europe: 

• Many environmental criminals are legal business owners 

• Criminal networks are increasingly targeting central and eastern Europe to illegally transport waste 

• Criminals are using legal online marketplaces to trade fluorinated gases (F-gases) 

• The EU is the main destination for trafficked wildlife 

• Wildlife traffickers are increasingly targeting endemic species, especially birds, from Europe to Africa 

• Waste from synthetic drugs is a prevalent source of environmental damage
   

Defining environmental offences 

In Europe, environmental crimes are defined as the: 

• Improper collection, transport, recovery, or disposal of waste 

• Illegal emission or discharge of substances into the atmosphere, water, or soil 

• Killing, destruction, possession of, or trade of wild animals or plant species 

• Illegal trade in ozone-depleting substances 

These are further categorized by their impact on the environment. 

Activities such as these can result in irreversible damage, including increased pollution levels, which, in turn, can raise the planet’s overall temperature leading to a host of challenges such as:  

• Melting sea ice 

• Rising sea levels 

• Natural disasters like wildfires, floods, tsunamis, and hurricanes 

• Degradation of wildlife and marine life 

• Reduced biodiversity

What is the Environmental Crime Directive?

The new Environmental Crime Directive replaces the original 2008 protection of the environment regulation, which was found to be insufficient in protecting the environment after evaluations in 2019 and 2020. The 2008 law was unsuccessful in identifying and penalizing environmental crime cases, providing dissuasive sanctions, managing cross-border cooperation, and filling compliance gaps across Member States.  

Therefore, in 2021, the European Commission proposed the new Environmental Crime Directive, with the following objectives at the core of its development: 

1. Clarify definitions of environmental crime to avoid misinterpretation 
2. Bring new environmental crime sectors into the scope 
3. Define types and levels of penalties 
4. Better foster cross-border investigation and prosecution 
5. Improve collection and dissemination of data to enhance decision-making 
6. Improve efficacy of national enforcement chains 

The new Directive was adopted on 11 April 2024 and came into force on 20 May 2024, and fulfils a commitment of the European Green Deal.  

Its overarching aim is to protect the environment from damage through enacting new criminal definitions, higher sanctions, more effective investigations, and stricter measures to tackle environmental crime. 

It includes the following notable additions: 

• An up-to-date list of criminal offences in the national legal order of Member States 

• New offence categories, such as: unlawful ship recycling and water extraction, breaches of EU chemicals and mercury laws, and exporting and selling commodities and products in breach of the European Union Deforestation Regulation 

• The establishment of a hierarchy of minimum to maximum penalties for imprisonment 

• The establishment of alternative fining methods for legal individuals, between EUR 24 and 40 million 

• Sufficient resources, training, and mechanisms to improve the efficacy of investigators and police officers reviewing environmental crime cases 

• Provisions to support environmental defenders

European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats

In addition to the ECD, the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT) 2017, initially established as the EU Policy Cycle in 2012, is a flagship initiative aimed at combating organized international crime — of which environmental crime is a sector.  

The scheme focuses on establishing and implementing methodologies to tackle the most prevalent threats to the EU, encouraging collaboration between Member States, EU agencies, and third-party countries and organizations.  

Its initial 2018-2021 four-year period reaped positive results, including: 

• 829 arrests valued at EUR 8.3 million 

• 167,452 tons of waste seized, valued at EUR 4-15 billion 

• 1,174 tons of e-waste seized to avoid releasing toxins into the environment 

• 32,007 m3 of timber seized, valued at EUR 6 billion annually, accounting for 15-30% of the global timber trade 

• 639 ivory items seized, protecting the increased risk of elephant extinction 

EMPACT hopes to continue and improve upon these efforts in its 2022-2025 cycle.

How will the Environmental Crime Directive affect businesses?

Under the ECD, Member States need to convert the environmental offences into their national law. It also allows Member States to include specific offences in addition to those regulated under the Directive. This heightens the potential for stricter provisions, and businesses will need to understand which regulations apply to them when the Directive is transposed in their region.  

Further, according to Article 4, some environmental crimes can be punishable even when they weren’t fully enacted by a guilty party. For example, Member States will be able to mandate fines, imprisonment, or other punishments to those attempting, instigating, aiding, or abetting certain environmental crimes.  

The new stipulations outlined under the 2024 ECD mean companies need to dedicate more time and resources to monitoring and tracking their impact on the environment, to ensure they’re not breaching any criteria. Businesses operating in Europe will need to review their current practices at all facilities, their use and disposal of substances, and their extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes to make better, more sustainable decisions to protect the environment.