The Green Deal and the criminal enforcement of European environmental law

We find ourselves in an unprecedented developmental stage in both the realms of EU environmental policymaking and European criminal law. The twin manifestations of this are the Green Deal and the Environmental Crime Directive (ECD 2024), which both demand profound transformations by communities, firms, and institutions alike. We argue that it is only possible to realise the ambitions of the Green Deal and ECD 2024 if attention is paid to how the environmental acquis will be enforced within the varying realities of Member States. By combining environmental legal analysis with (green) criminological concepts, we underscore the risk of increased criminal and harmful activities under the pressures of this transformative era. We use the Netherlands as an example to showcase that, even in a Member State with promising effective environmental enforcement, many important challenges remain in closing the gap between the green ambitions and enforcement practice at the domestic level.