International Law

Criminal Penalties, Environmental Law and Ship-Source Pollution: Directive 2009/123/EC

By Bartolus

The Council and European Parliament have adopted Directive 2009/123/EC on ship-source pollution and on the introduction of penalties for infringements.

After the judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C-176/03 Commission v Council that we wrote about here and the Court's judgment in Case C-440/05 Commission v. Council ECR [2007] I-9097 annulling Council Framework Decision 2005/667/JHA of July 12th 2005 to strengthen the criminal law framework for the enforcement of the law against ship-source pollution, the Council and European Parliament have finally adopted Directive 2009/123/EC to amend Directive 2005/35/EC to include criminal penalties to buttress its substantive provisions.

The adoption of Directive 2009/123/EC brings to a conclusion the dispute between the Commission and the Council on the possibility of including provisions on harmonizing criminal penalties for breaches of EU law and environmental law in particular.

For a previous post on the follow-up to the Court of Justice's judgments, see here.

Full post as published by EU Law Blog on November 30, 2009 (boomark / email).