Environmental Protection through Criminal Law Practical Parallelism Between Directive 2008/99/EC and Albanian Criminal Law

Environmental crime is the fourth largest criminal activity in the world, after drug trafficking, human trafficking and falsification, growing between 5%-7% per year (Assessment from Interpol of the United Nations Environment Programme). Our criminal code provides numerous of offenses with a focus on environmental protection. These criminal acts, regardless of the immediate needs for investigation and prosecution, have been not taken seriously rather in investigation and further in judgment. This is due to various factors, among the most important being the neglect from almost all responsible structures on environment protection. Today, as the consequences of these crimes have taken an unstoppable consequence, the focus of policymakers and legislative body, must turn to environmental protection through various mechanisms, but especially through criminal sanctions. Within this protection, which has already reached the levels of a challenge, there is a need for new legal provisions. In this regard, in this paper, we address shortly the legal regulation and evolution of environmental crimes in Albania, various aspects of the investigation and prosecution of environmental crimes in Albania, referring to statistics, analyzing them and drawing recommendations, which are still valid and more, taking into consideration the initiation of work for drafting the New Penal Code, as well as the practical parallelism between Directive 2008/99/EC on environmental protection through criminal law and Albanian criminal law in environmental protection. Received: 20 December 2023 / Accepted: 29 February 2024 / Published: 5 March 2024