(CN) — The European Union on Tuesday became the first international body to criminalize ecocide, or crimes against the environment, with a 499-123 vote in the European Parliament.
The EU's Environmental Crimes Directive introduces stricter penalties, including up to 10 years in prison, for environmental crime across its 27 member states.
Marie Toussaint, a French member of Parliament for the Greens and one of the leading negotiators on the directive, called the law extremely important for Europe’s legal system because it will offer protection from those who harm ecosystems.
“In a few years, environmental crimes have become the fourth-largest criminal sector in the world. Yet current EU and national legislations are not preventing and dissuading offenders, because offenses are too limited and sanctions very low,” she said.
With the new rules, national governments can enforce penalties of up to 10 years' imprisonment and exclude companies or organizations from public funds. They can also fine perpetrators who violate the rules up to 5% of total turnover, or a maximum of 40 million euros ($43 million).
“The revised directive recognizes new offenses such as large-scale sale of illegal products, manufacture and use of restricted chemicals and mercury, unauthorized water withdrawals, illegal logging and destruction of habitats or ozone,” Toussaint said.
The Parliament has doubled the list of environmental offenses from nine to 18, which now including crimes such as the shipment of toxic waste to developing countries or harmful agricultural practices in protected nature areas.
The new environmental legal framework includes a definition of ecocide or “qualified offenses,” meaning large-scale catastrophic impact on environmental systems such as big forest fires or widespread pollution.
A 2020 European Environmental Agency report backs up Toussaint’s claims that Europe needs better sanctions, saying that “environmental crime is a lucrative business in the EU” because penalties have been too low.
The agency's report singled out 2015's “Dieselgate,” when Volkswagen used illegal software to skew diesel emission numbers in tests. The action turned out to be difficult to punish under existing German criminal law. The case also made its way to U.S. courts.
A smaller Dutch case features in the report as well. The wholesale company Tronex planned to ship electronic products that customers had returned, such as kettles or fans, to Tanzania. The ruling found that it clashed with the EU Waste Directive and imposed a 5,000 euro fine on the company.
European member states have already started discussing the potential implications of the new EU directive. In Denmark, for example, authorities debate whether an incident like the Nordic Waste toxic landslide might be labelled an environmental crime in the future, which would prevent companies from declaring bankruptcy to avoid financial liability.
According to environmental law expert at Copenhagen University Ana Stella Ebbersmeyer, the new EU directive is powerful because it sets a strong juridical precedent for better protecting the environment.
She noted that it could “inspire other countries outside the EU to implement stricter rules for environmental conduct,” but added that, somewhat surprisingly, climate emissions are absent in the new list of offenses.
“It is very difficult to create criminal laws against climate change and the atmospheric damage caused by greenhouse gases, because it happens so gradually. The challenge is to pick a specific offender and event,” Ebbersmeyer said.
“The EU itself has limited options to pursue and handle criminal court cases,” she said.
The directive still needs final approval from EU’s state leaders in March before it enters into force. Member states have two years to implement the rules.
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