Mr. John Finnegan:

The existing provisions from the current directive, which are being carried forward, included provisions relating to biodiversity. The new criminal offences defined would criminalise activities in breach of environmental legislation that would harm ecosystems and biodiversity.

With regard to the sanctions and criminalisation, the picture the Commission found was that while authorities were in place in member states to police the existing crimes, this was ineffective because co-operation between them was not effective. Therefore, the view of the Commission is that by improving co-operation between member states, prosecutorial and investigative activity will be much more effective. The Commission draws attention to the fact that the definitions of the crimes before 2008 were different in different member states. Some member states did not define them as crimes. It was found in the evaluation that the directive gave enough discretion such that the definitions were still different, and this caused difficulties, including practical difficulties, in cross-border investigations. Since the definitions and sanctions were different, it was not even possible to use legal machinery such as the European arrest warrant. The reasoning behind what was proposed was that by tightening the definition of the crimes, expanding the list of crimes and harmonising the sanctions, the existing investigative activity would be much more effective. This was because people could co-operate between member states. Obviously, environmental damage does not respect member state borders. In the Commission's view, which seems reasonable, investigations have to cross borders as well.