Lexambiente (Aug 2020)
Hybrid nature of confiscation and remedial purpose of environmental confiscation: there is no breach of the criterion of reasonableness and equality in the failure to provide for the possibility of excluding confiscation in the event of reclamation or restoration of the places following an unlawful infringement.
Abstract
Starting from the judgment no. 15965 of 2020, the contribution analyzes the nature of the institution of confiscation and, specifically, the reparatory purpose of environmental confiscation. In the above-mentioned decision, the Court refer to the nature of the remediation ex art. 452 undeciesc.p, emphasizing that the same measure is conditioned by the fullness of one of the malicious environmental crimes introduced by the same law May 22, 2015 n. 68 is conditioned by the nature of the disastrous and sometimes irreversible effects of criminal conduct. The Supreme Court therefore considers manifestly unfounded the exception of constitutional illegitimacy of the rule in the part in which it does not provide that the obligation to confiscate may fail even in the power to restore the state of the places following the breach provided for in art. 256 of d.l. n. 152/2006. And therefore, according to the Court, the omission of the extension of the possibility of disapplication of confiscation to contravention cases doesn't violate the principle of formal and substantive equality protected by art. 3 of the Constitution. The different legislation, in fact, is justified by the different nature of the confiscations, the one pursuant to art. 452 undecies has a function of compensation and restoration, while the confiscation pursuant to art. 260 terd.lgs 15 of 2006 has a punitive-sanctioning.
