REGULATIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL INFRINGEMENT IN THE PROJECT OF THE CRIMINAL LAW OF UKRAINE AND CRIMINAL LEGISLATION OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES: COMPARATIVE LEGAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The relevance of the article is explained by the need to resolve the unresolved issue in the doctrine of how liability for encroachment on the environment should be regulated in the draft of the new CC. The purpose of writing this article is to study the approaches used in the criminal codes of European countries regarding the location in the system of their special parts of norms devoted to the regulation of responsibility for encroachment on the environment, to compare these approaches with the option embodied in the Project, as well as to develop, on this basis, scientifically based recommendations regarding improvement of the relevant provisions of the Project. A wide range of scientific methods was used during the research, in particular when proving the stated hypotheses and substantiating the conclusions, among which the following should be highlighted: comparative-legal, formal-logical, philosophical, methods of system analysis and modeling. Based on the results of writing the article, a conclusion is made about the need to allocate a separate book on criminal offenses against the environment, to which the sections devoted to criminal offenses against environmental safety and the procedure for the use and protection of natural resources, which are currently not in “their” books, would be “transferred”, respectively. The advantages of this approach are that it makes it possible to ensure the specificity of criminal offenses against the environment as much as possible; absolute correlation between generic, specific and main direct objects of specific criminal offenses included in their composition; continuity of the criminal legislation of Ukraine; and also takes into account the best foreign practices. The obtained results can be used in scientific and law-making activities, as well as in the work on further improvement of the project of the new Criminal Code.