EU Strategy to Combat Wildlife Trafficking Could Encourage New Criminal Penalties

摘要

The European Commission could resurrect an attempt to require European Union member states to impose minimum criminal penalties for certain wildlife crimes as part of a strategy to crack down on trafficking in threatened species. The commission, the EU's executive arm, said Feb. 26 that it would review this year the European Union Environmental Crime Directive (2008/99/EC), which sets out a list of offenses that member-states should consider as criminal and to which they should apply "effective, proportionate and dissuasive" criminal sanctions.