European Diary/Jamie Smyth:Few people in the Ivory Coast had ever heard of the tanker Probo Koalawhen it steamed into the port of Abidjan last August to unload a cargo of chemical waste.
Yet within days it became known locally as a ship of death, allegedly responsible for the poisoning of thousands of people and 10 fatalities in one of Africa's worst environmental disasters. The tanker had planned to unload its cargo of spent caustic soda, gasoline residues and water in Amsterdam a few days earlier. Instead it sailed for the cheaper port of Abidjan, where a local waste contractor dumped the chemical waste in open-air sites around the city.
Criminal investigations into the incident are underway in Europe and Africa. The Dutch firm Trafigura, which chartered the tanker, strongly denies any wrongdoing and says it is distressed by the deaths and illnesses. But the case has forced Europe's politicians to sit up and take notice of environmental crime and how to tackle it.
Environment commissioner Stavros Dimas announced last Friday that the Abidjan tragedy had "accelerated" the commission's work on a new EU directive to make offences against the environment a criminal act across all 27 EU member states.
"The recent hazardous waste disaster in the Ivory Coast shows how environmental crimes can have devastating effects on people and the environment," said Dimas, who unveiled the EU legislative proposal with justice commissioner Franco Frattini at a press conference.
The directive, which must still be approved by EU ministers and the European Parliament, would require states to criminalise activities such as illegal shipment of waste, unlawful trade in endangered species or in ozone-depleting substances, if they were committed intentionally or with serious negligence.
Activities resulting in deaths, serious injury or substantial damage to air, soil, water, animals or plants would be punishable by up to five years in prison or fines of at least €750,000 for firms. Alternative penalties include requiring firms to clean up environmental damage or stopping businesses from operating altogether. The green lobby welcomed the European Commission initiative, although they want the list of punishable crimes in the directive expanded.
"EU legislation to tackle discrepancies between member states in sanctioning environmental crimes and end criminals being able to abuse loopholes in some national legal systems is long overdue," said Monica Frassoni co-president of the Green group in the European Parliament.
Supporters of the draft EU law point to the existence of "safe havens" for environmental crime. For example using national law, the Dutch government has already initiated a criminal probe into Trafigura over the Abidjan poisoning, however this may not have been possible in Greece and Spain due to their environmental laws.
The commission has pinpointed France, Malta, Italy and Cyprus as the EU states with some of the weakest criminal laws for tackling environmental damage. Yet the commission's plan to expand its remit into the sensitive area of criminal law is highly contentious. Until now the right to draft criminal laws has lain with national parliaments, and several EU states - including Britain, Denmark and Ireland - are likely to fight a proposal they fear could set a dangerous precedent in EU lawmaking.
"I would be very cautious to allow countries with a civil law system to take decisions at an EU level by qualified majority which would interfere with Ireland's common law system and this includes interfering with our internal judicial procedures," said Brian Crowley, Fianna Fáil MEP and co-president of the UEN group in the European Parliament.
"Laws of evidence and legal procedures are fundamentally different between these two legal systems . . . Giving the EU powers over how we run our criminal legal systems would be improper and premature at this stage." The commission's proposal builds on a landmark judgment by the European Court of Justice in 2005, which found the commission has the power to draft criminal laws and decide what constitutes a crime, notably in the area of the environment. And in a paper published last year, the EU executive targeted several areas in which it feels it can draft criminal laws, such as protecting intellectual property rights.
Aware of the sensitivities of many member states in the criminal law area, Franco Frattini said on Friday he would use these powers "prudently". Nevertheless, a clash between EU states and the commission is inevitable when the proposal is debated by EU ambassadors and ministers in Brussels later this year. For some ministers the directive on environmental crime could become a "Trojan horse", enabling a further expansion of commission powers at member states' expense. For supporters of the draft law, it means setting a minimum level of protection for the environment in Europe, and perhaps even in Abidjan.