Must environmental criminal law always be dependent on administrative law? Assessing the opportunity for a limited number of offences being autonomous from administrative law

Abstract

The chapter intends to analyse the pluses and minuses of traditional environmental criminal law’s dependence on administrative law. The two possible forms of integration between criminal and administrative law, i.e., the so-called ‘purely accessory’ and ‘partially accessory’ models, are evaluated from a comparative perspective, while also considering the European Directive 2008/99/European Community (EC) on the protection of the environment through criminal law, and the new proposal for a Directive, replacing the previous one, put forward by the European Commission in December 2021. Followed by a reflection on the different model of environmental criminal law, autonomous from administrative law (also called the ‘purely criminal’ model: a model that should be associated with the purely accessory one and the partially accessory one).