The relationship between EU criminal law and environmental law

Ensuring a high level of environmental protection is an essential objective of the EU; in order to pursue this objective, an extremely comprehensive environmental legislation has been over the decades enacted by the EC and EU, with a current emphasis by the EU institutions on the need to ensure compliance with and enforcement of such legislation, including by the means of criminal law. Against this background, this chapter first of all describes the history of the relationship between environmental law and EU criminal law. On this basis, the rationale and content of Directive 2008/99/EC on the protection of the environment through criminal law are analysed. Then, the need for a revision of this legal instrument and the new EU Environmental Crime Directive - Directive (EU) 2024/1203 - are examined and assessed, as are other relevant initiatives, adopted by the EU institutions, of relevance to environmental criminal law.