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What's new? 14/12/2021: The European Commission adopted a proposal for a new Directive on the protection of the environment through criminal law. It defines new environmental criminal offences, introduces more detailed provisions on sanctions, rules to strengthen enforcement and measures to assist people who report offences and cooperate with enforcement authorities. See the Proposal, Annexes, Accompanying Communication, Impact Assessment,  Executive summary impact assessment , Study – Evaluation, and Study annexes. Find out more in the press release, QandA and factsheet. View the Guidance on combating environmental crime and related infringements, endorsed by the Environmental Compliance and Governance Forum, is now available in different languages. A Summary Guide is also available.

Environmental crimes are infringements of relevant legal obligations that can cause significant harm or risk to the environment and human health and are or can be addressed through criminal law.

Offences like the illegal emission or discharge of substances into air, water or soil, illegal trade in wildlife, illegal trade in ozone-depleting substances and the illegal shipment or dumping of waste can have devastating effects on the environment and human health but often remain invisible. Environmental crime often affects society as a whole rather than individuals. It rarely involves victims informing the police or the courts of the committed crime. That is why environmental crime is an underestimated phenomenon.

The impact of environmental crime on the natural environment in Europe and the world manifests itself in increasing levels of pollution, a degradation of wildlife, a reduction in biodiversity and the disturbance of ecological balance.

Environmental crime is a growing concern causing significant damage also to citizens’ health and the economy within and beyond the Union. According to Interpol and the United Nations Environment Programme, environmental crime is the fourth largest criminal activity in the world after drug trafficking, human trafficking and counterfeiting, growing at a rate between 5%-7% per year, two to three times the pace of global economic growth.

Environmental crime is highly lucrative but it is hard to detect, prosecute and punish it. These factors make it highly attractive for organised crime groups. Very often, environmental crimes have a cross-border aspect.

Combating environmental crimes can be understood as discovering environmental crimes and related infringements that have been committed; imposing sanctions on or taking other action against the perpetrators; preventing environmental crimes from being committed and preventing the harm that they can cause.

In the EU, the main binding instrument is the Directive 2008/99/EC on the protection of the environment through criminal law. Find out more about this Directive and its history.

Work to support effective combating environmental crime is also undertaken under the Environmental Compliance and Governance Forum which was established as a high-level Commission Expert Group by Commission Decision C(2018)10 on 18 January 2018 at the same time as the adoption of the Commission's Action Plan on environmental compliance assurance – see Communication on EU actions to improve environmental compliance and governance COM (2018)10.

In 2021, a Forum sub-group on sanctioning of environmental offences was established. Its work will focus, inter alia, on developing common views and on collecting good practices on environmental enforcement and sanctioning.