Environmental Crime and the EU: Synthesis of the Research Project “European Union Action to Fight Environmental Crime

Drawing on the EFFACE work on data and impacts, the report highlights the often incomplete nature of data on environmental crime. It shows the difficulties in estimating the impacts of environmental crime in a quantitative manner. This is illustrated using the examples of poaching, illegal waste exports from the EU to China and forest fires.

Summarising EFFACE research on actors, instruments and institutions, the report describes the most important instruments at the EU level dealing with environmental crime. With regard to the Member States it sheds light at national legal frameworks on environmental crime as well as the functioning of enforcement institutions.

A further section is dedicated to weaknesses in the EU's efforts to address environmental crime in nine areas, including e.g. the system of sanctions or the role of NGOs. This section is based on the EFFACE report on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (link is external)related to the EU's approach in combatting environmental crime.

In the final section, the report presents the most important policy recommendations developed by EFFACE; a more extended version of these recommendations is published in a self-standing report.