Environmental crime includes wildlife crimes, illegal waste dumping, substance smuggling, and illegal mining. These types of crime lead to habitat loss and species extinction, contribute to global warming, destabilise communities and economies, undermine security and development, and foster corruption. Often transnational in nature, environmental crime has become a lucrative industry for organised crime, which is underpinned by Europol research that has identified numerous criminal networks operating within the EU specializing in waste, pollution, and wildlife crimes. However, there is a lack of comprehensive data, which hampers evaluation and monitoring of measures by policymakers and practitioners. Limited awareness and scarce resource allocation for combating environmental crime is an overarching problem.
The Environmental Crime Directive adopted in 2008 aimed to address some of these issues, but the European Commission’s evaluation found that it did not have much effect in practice. In April 2024, a revised directive was adopted. It introduces several new … Read more

On 11 April 2024, the EU adopted a new environmental crime directive to replace Directive 2008/99 of 19 November 2008. This article discusses why a new Directive in the area of environmental crime had become necessary. It particularly argues that the introduction of an autonomous environmental crime and a qualified offence of ecocide constitute important changes. The article points out other novelties, e.g. with regard to minimum sanctions and the collection of statistical data. They may substantially improve the enforcement of European environmental law through criminal law.

On 20 May 2024, the new Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR) entered into force. The Regulation aims to better ensure that waste exported outside the EU is properly managed and to modernise shipment procedures to reflect the objectives of a circular economy and climate neutrality.
The new provisions include a mandate to the European Commission to carry out inspections in complex cross-border cases of illegal waste shipments. The Commission will entrust OLAF with implementing these enforcement powers. This will reaffirm and extend the role that the Office and its investigators have been playing in recent years under existing legal frameworks. In the future, OLAF will be able to act on its own initiative, not only in the case of illegal waste shipments entering, transiting or leaving the EU, but also for intra-EU shipments. The new rules will allow for a better fight against waste trafficking, contribute to the protection of the … Read more

This article envisages the possible extension of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office’s competences in the field of environmental protection. The author first presents an overview of the Office’s competences under the current legislation and, second, analyses suggestions on extending these competences specifically to the field of environmental crime. The case is made that a stronger, more comprehensive scope of competence for the EPPO would strengthen its position in the EU. This warrants an extension of the Office's jurisdiction to other types of crime, especially in the fight against cross-border crime such as environmental crime.

While the right to lawyer-client confidentiality has long been recognised as a fundamental right enshrined in the right to legal assistance and the right of defence, its practical implementation does not seem to provide adequate safeguards. Many EU Member States still lack clear rules on how to ensure that privileged communications are not captured during the interception of communications and the search/seizure of computers during criminal investigations. Also, OLAF investigations struggle with deficiencies in safeguarding the lawyer-client privilege. Taking the case law of the European Court of Human Rights as a starting point to identify common standards on the lawyer-client privilege in criminal proceedings, this article argues that there is a need for the European Union to take legislative action to ensure the effective protection of this right.

This article discusses access to a lawyer via videoconferencing for detained suspects and accused persons. In today’s digital age, the introduction of videoconferencing leads to enhance the right of access to a lawyer for suspects and accused persons under Directive 2013/48/EU. The article first provides an overview of the current provisions of the Directive, then analyses the situation in Germany (which has already introduced access to a lawyer by means of videoconference), and lastly shows the benefits of access to a lawyer via videoconference. A revision of Directive 2013/48/EU in order to enshrine this right is proposed in the last section.