The European Council formally adopted a new environmental crime directive, which includes provision to criminalise cases ‘comparable to ecocide’. This is the latest and final vote on the new Directive and follows approval by the European Parliament in February and a landmark political agreement between the European Council, Commission and Parliament in November 2023.

Member states will now have a 24 month period, via the so-called ‘transposition’ process, in which to align national legislation with the newly adopted directive. 

The EU has agreed to enshrine in law a new offence that aims to punish the most serious crimes against the environment. The final text emerged following several months of negotiation (“trilogues”) between the European Council, Commission and Parliament considering, inter alia, the establishment of a “qualified offence” aimed at preventing and punishing the gravest environmental harms including, as the accompanying recitals specify, “cases comparable to ecocide”. 

Via announcement at a monthly plenary session, the European Parliament officially declared its support of the inclusion of ecocide-level crimes into the European Union’s revised Directive on protection of the environment through criminal law. 

Following the direction of travel established in the 4 previous consultative committees, the last and most important of these in the context of this Directive, the legal affairs (JURI) committee, unanimously voted to include the most serious environmental crimes - widely known as “ecocide” - in its proposed text for the Directive which will be presented in the EU Parliament on 17th April.

European Parliament Report on Human Rights & Democracy recommends EU member states to support criminalising ecocide at the ICC & also examine relevance to EU law.

The EU’s newly adopted Biodiversity Strategy includes: "Encourages the EU and the Member States to promote the recognition of ecocide as an international crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)."

European Parliament’s Legal Affairs committee on the liability of companies for environmental damage urges the European Commission to “study the relevance of ecocide to EU law and EU diplomacy” (para 12).

European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs resolves to encourage “the EU and its Member States to take a bold initiative ... to pave the way within the International Criminal Court (ICC) towards new negotiations between the parties with a view to recognising ‘ecocide’ as an international crime under the Rome Statute” (para 11).

ENVI (environmental) committee calls on the Commission and member states to support recognition of ecocide in international law, and on the Commission to study its relevance for EU law.

Parliament votes to encourage member states to support recognition of ecocide as a crime at the ICC.