Environmental crimes in the penal code. This is the objective of a draft law which the Assembly of the Chamber began examining yesterday and on which there seems to be broad consensus among the political forces. The text of the provision was finalized by the Justice Commission, which unified several legislative proposals of parliamentary initiative and which follows the contents of an enabling law already presented by the Prodi government in 2007, but lapsed with that legislature.
The provision aims to insert a new title in the second book of the penal code, dedicated to crimes against the environment. It would include the crimes of environmental disaster, trafficking and abandonment of highly radioactive material; but also simply environmental pollution, defined as a violation of legislative or administrative provisions aimed at protecting the environment, which causes a significant impairment or deterioration of the quality of water, air, soil and subsoil as well as of the flora or fauna or in any case of the 'ecosystem. The crimes are also configured for negligent conduct, but in this case the penalties are reduced by up to half.
The reduction of penalties is also envisaged in cases of voluntary repentance, for anyone who takes steps to prevent the criminal activity from producing further consequences or who provides for the reclamation and, if possible, the restoration of polluted places.
A particular provision concerns the confiscation of goods used to commit the crimes, always envisaged in cases of conviction or in any case application of the penalty for plea bargaining, as well as the confiscation of the products and profits of the crime.
From the debate on the measure carried out in the Chamber, a broad consensus emerged on the measure, motivated by the general need to protect the environment and fueled by more or less recent episodes of environmental disasters caused by criminal organizations. For the draft law, therefore, the road would seem paved for a rapid parliamentary process; and also the representative of the Government, the undersecretary of the Presidency of the Council Sesa Amici, affirmed that she sees all the premises for a very rapid approval of the provision, hoped for by the Executive.
Beyond the easy consents motivated by generic requests for environmental protection, however, the observations expressed by Dorina Bianchi, of the Nuovo Centro Destra, should be noted, who drew attention to the need to determine the notion of crimes in a more precise manner, in the compliance with the principle of mandatory nature of the incriminating cases, so that on the one hand citizens can know precisely the prohibited conduct, on the other hand not too much space is left to the discretion of the magistrates and to arbitrariness that could damage the production system.
Furthermore, Bianchi observed how the violation of simple administrative provisions cannot be sufficient to configure the commission of crimes, since it would conflict with the principle of the reserve of law in criminal matters, attributing to the administrative authorities the power to introduce criminal prohibitions of beyond the legislative provisions.
The examination of the provision on environmental crimes in the Chamber could be slowed down in the coming days, due to the precedence that the assembly will have to reserve for the decree laws on the IMU (legislative decree 133) and on environmental disasters (legislative decree 136).
