European Parliament Votes Unanimously for Ecocide

In an exciting development for proponents of a new international crime of ecocide, the European Parliament on Tuesday agreed a text for the new Environmental Crimes Directive (“Draft Directive”) which prohibits environmental damage in terms almost identical to the Independent Expert Panel (“IEP”) proposal for the definition of the crime. The unanimous position is a big success for the activists and parliamentarians who campaigned to have ecocide included in the Draft Directive. In this post, I compare the European Parliament position to the IEP definition, and briefly consider what this latest step means for the emerging norm.

The Draft Directive would replace the existing EU Environmental Crimes Directive, Directive 2008/99/EC, which dates from November 2008. The IEP definition of ecocide appears in two different places in the Draft Directive: in the recitals or preambular paragraphs, and then in a new article 3(1a). 

Read full article here.