ECOFORCE: ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME DIRECTIVE — OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR OPTIMISED RESPONSE AND COMPLIANCE ENFORCEMENT

Co-funded by the European Union under the LIFE Programme

The challenge

Environmental crime is among the most profitable forms of serious and organised criminality, and among the least prosecuted. Wildlife trafficking, waste trafficking, illegal mining, pollution offences and chemical crime cause damage that is diffuse, cumulative and frequently transboundary and that rarely fits the categories of ordinary criminal procedure.

Directive (EU) 2024/1203 on the protection of the environment through criminal law, the Environmental Crime Directive (ECD), was designed to close that gap. It replaces Directives 2008/99/EC and 2009/123/EC, expands the catalogue of environmental offences from nine to twenty categories of criminal offences, introduces qualified offences for conduct causing destruction or widespread and substantial damage to ecosystems, and imposes new obligations on Member States regarding national strategies, statistical data, investigative tools, training and specialisation. Member States were required to transpose the Directive by 21 May 2026.

However, the Directive’s central operative concepts “substantial damage”, “conduct likely to cause damage”, “non-negligible quantities” are not self-executing. They must be applied by inspectors at the roadside, by police officers building a case file, by prosecutors deciding whether to charge, and by judges assessing gravity. Without shared assessment criteria, comparable data and common tools, the same conduct will be treated as an administrative infringement in one Member State and as a qualified criminal offence in another. Deterrence, and the level playing field the Directive is meant to create, both suffer.

WHAT ECOFORCE DOES

ECOFORCE supports the effective and harmonised implementation of the Environmental Crime Directive by bridging the distance between legal requirements and enforcement practice. The project is co-funded by the European Union’s LIFE Programme.

The project works along four connected lines:

ACTIVITIES

LIFE ECOFORCE is structured in five work packages. The sequence is deliberate: research (WP2) produces the evidence base; training (WP3) and guidance and tools (WP4) build on it; sustainability and exploitation (WP5) carries the results beyond the project; and coordination (WP1) runs throughout.

How we work

Practitioner co-creation
Inspectors, law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges work alongside legal, academic and technical experts to design, test and refine every output. This is not consultation after the fact: practitioners shape the tools before they are finalised.

Two advisory bodies
A Practitioner Sounding Board brings together operational-level practitioners from across Member States, who review drafts, take part in focus groups and test tools in their own working contexts. A High-Level Advisory Board of senior representatives from EU agencies and enforcement networks provides strategic oversight and promotes institutional uptake.

Evidence before design
Research (WP2) precedes and feeds training (WP3) and tools (WP4). Nothing is produced that is not grounded in a documented operational need.

Multilingual and adaptable
Core outputs are produced in English and at least two additional EU languages, in digital and print-ready formats, and released in editable versions so that national authorities can adapt them to their own legal and institutional context.

Open by default
Public deliverables are made freely available through the project repository.

Outputs and resources

The ECOFORCE produces research reports, guidance documents, templates, toolkits and training materials, released progressively between 2026 and 2028. Public outputs are made freely available as they are completed on the coordinator’s website. Restricted outputs, chiefly investigative materials whose circulation must be limited, are made available to registered practitioners through the project repository.

Outputs are designed to be used, not only read: templates come in editable formats, guidance comes with flowcharts and worked examples, and core documents are translated into at least two additional EU languages.