On February 08-09 2024, the training was hosted in Sarajevo for environmental inspectors, judges and prosecutors from Bosnia and Herzegovina to strengthen their capacities on prosecution of environmental crimes as well as on the changes of new Environmental Crime Directive in order to secure better implementation and enforcement of the national environmental legislation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The workshop was organized by the Resource Environmental Center (REC) in partnership and close cooperation with: Center for Education of Judges and Prosecutors of FBiH and Center for Education of Judges and Prosecutors of RS, European Union Forum of Judges for the Environment (EUFJE), European Network of Prosecutors for the Environment (ENPE), Prosecutor’s office from Serbia and environmental inspectorates from Slovenia and North Macedonia.
Environmental crime is the fourth largest criminal activity in the world and at a global level, the progressive worsening of the situation, as recorded in reports from many institutions. The judges and prosecutors who work daily in the fight against environmental crime have, over the years, made major efforts to implement the Environmental Crime Directive in force (Directive 2008/99/EC) and Criminal code of BiH, but there have been too many obstacles to its practical implementation which have prevented criminal environmental law from being effective. In all situations the rule of law needs to be upheld, and conditions established to ensure the proper enforcement of environmental law by practitioners, on a daily basis. This is for now, more than ever, a crucial challenge.
This activity is included in the NEST Project with the aim of bringing experiences and synergies from different actors from EU in the fight against environmental crime and of consolidating alliances to share information, to study advances in processing of similar criminal cases and to disseminate good practices and results.
