Glasnik Advokatske komore Vojvodine (Jan 2022)
Criminal law instruments of the adequacy of environmental protection: The norm and praxis of Republika Srpska
Abstract
The questions that constitute the subject matter of this article are analyzed through three groups of questions and concluding remarks in which the basic findings reached in the professional-critical analysis of these questions are presented in the form of a summary. The first group of questions deals with general remarks about the environment and its adequate protection, specifically from two aspects (international law aspects and normative-practical aspects in Republika Srpska). The basic conclusion of the analysis of this group of questions is the necessity of ensuring (normative and practical) preconditions for the most adequate protection of the environment possible, and the instruments of criminal law (criminal legislature and its application) are among the crucial ones. The second group of questions is dedicated to the assumptions about the desired degree of adequacy of environmental protection (their notion and types). The basic conclusion of the analysis of this group of questions is that there are numerous assumptions about the desired degree of ensuring the adequacy of state reaction to ecological and other types of crime, whereby those that have the characteristics of criminal law deserve a special status. Bearing in mind precisely this significance of the norms of criminal law as instruments of environmental protection, the third group of questions is dedicated to the analysis (normative and practical) of the preconditions which determine the degree of adequacy of the instruments of criminal law for the protection of the environment. Viewed in isolation, these are the norm of criminal law; the adequacy of the application of the norms of criminal law; the efficiency of the procedure for discovering and demonstrating that ecological crimes were committed (the efficiency of the criminal procedure); efficient forfeiture of assets obtained through criminal activities belonging to this group of crimes. The basic conclusion of the analysis of this class of questions is that despite their diversity, these assumptions must be viewed through their shared properties. Only in cases when they are met simultaneously, both from the normative and from the practical aspect, is it possible to say that they are a function of the desired degree of adequacy of environmental protection, which is not yet the case with Republika Srpska, especially when it comes to their practical aspects.
