Ecocide à la Bruxelloise

Abstract

It had been a long time coming. After eight years of fervent political debates and painstaking legal drafting, the Belgian House of Representatives finally adopted a reform of its ancient Penal Code (dating back all the way to 1867) during the late hours of 22 February 2024. There is much to be said about the progressive spirit underlying this once-in-a-lifetime rehaul of the country’s criminal justice system (for instance, its treatment of imprisonment as a penalty of last resort). My focus in this analysis, however, lies with one of the Code’s substantive innovations: the introduction of a new crime of ‘ecocide’ to punish severe environmental transgressions. The ecocide provision has been hailed as a resounding victory for environmental activists, particularly so for the burgeoning Stop Ecocide campaign. But is the widespread excitement justified? Can the new law deliver on the lofty expectations? And how does it fit within the soon-to-be adopted revision of the Environmental Crime Directive at the EU level? Despite constituting a highly symbolic step, I argue that the Belgian law’s constrained scope makes it a toothless tool to punish environmental outlaws in practice. Its true potential, then, may lie in having broken the ice for future ecocide laws, as the much more ambitious EU law intimates.