19 May 2016

PRESS RELEASE

The Public Information and Media Relations Office within the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice is authorized to bring to public knowledge the following:

The Prosecutor General of the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice, Mr. Augustin Lazăr, took part yesterday, the 18^th of May 2016, in the opening of the 2^nd World Conference of the International Association of Penal Law on the topic “The Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law”, organized at the Aula Magna of the Faculty of Law within the University of Bucharest. The event enjoyed wide international participation, the lecturers invited to make presentations being famed professors and specialists from Romania, the United States of America, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Argentina, the Republic of Moldova, Brazil, China, Croatia, Spain.

In his speech, the Prosecutor General of the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice underlined the fact that crime against environment ranks fourth among international illicit activities worldwide which engendering criminal profit, after the trafficking in drugs, counterfeiting and trafficking in human beings. At the same time, Mr. Augustin Lazăr showed that this type of crime is in a close competition with the crime against the cultural heritage, another great plague that afflicts modern world. Referring to the current situation in Romania, the prosecutor general showed that taking into account the criminal provisions scattered in numerous special laws, which contain incongruities, differences and even contradictions, the need to harmonize them arises, with a view to issuing a coherent criminal response, adapted to the specificity of environment protection. Also, the prosecutor general stressed that in order to cope with the current deficiencies, it is necessary to take into consideration several issues, amongst which: drafting a new Environmental Code, that should precisely regulate, in a unitary, adequate conception, the criminal liability for harming the environment; creating specialized judicial pools for solving the cases related to environmental contraventions and crimes; setting up a database containing the jurisprudence in the matter, a network of prosecutors specialized in the field of environment at all levels of the Public Ministry; drafting specific regulations in relation to  experts and judicial expertise in the field of environment.

Also yesterday, Mr. Augustin Lazăr, Prosecutor General of the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice, had a work meeting, at the seat of the institution, with professor J. Vervaele, president of the International Association of Penal Law, and with professor Jose Luis de la Cuesta, honorary president of the same association, where they approached theoretical and practical aspects related to questions on environmental protection from the viewpoint of criminal legislation and Romanian practitioners.