From the protection of the environment of the Spanish Criminal Code to the new Directive (EU) 2024/1203: back to the crime of deforestation
Abstract
Environmental protection has seen a clear expansion of the use of the punitive instrument through the configuration of types of hazards and their own particularities. The recent Directive (EU) 2024/1203 constitutes a substantial change in the preference for the use of Criminal Law for the safeguarding of ecosystems that must be analyzed.
Through a criminal legal analysis of the Directive and applying an exploratory methodology of a documentary nature, our working hypothesis is the vision of Criminal Law as an opportunity for improvement in environmental protection for today and for future generations, safeguarding the essential principles and guarantees of this discipline.
In addition to the complexity of the matter, another important issue addressed is the criminal response that the Penal Code and the Directive offer to the problem of deforestation and possible solutions from a comparative law perspective, taking the Spanish, Italian or Colombian cases as an example. All this will be done through the analysis of sentences for crimes against the environment in recent years, in order to determine the opportunities, weaknesses and challenges of the next transposition of the Directive.
Received: 23.09.2025
Accepted: 16.12.2025
Downloads
Last update: 08/02/2022
The authors, by submitting their manuscripts to the Estudios Deusto. Revista de Derecho Público, accept the conditions listed below on copyright and undertake to comply with them.
- Authorship: The author must be the sole creator of the work or legally acting on behalf of and with the full agreement of all the authors.
- Copyright, liability and Ethical Guidelines:
- Authors warrant that their manuscript is original; has not been previously copyrighted or published in any form; is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; its submission and publication do not violate the Ethical Guidelines of Estudios Deusto. Revista de Derecho Público and any codes (of conduct), laws or any rights of any third party; and no publication payment by the Publisher (University of Deusto) is required.
- Authors grant to the Publisher the worldwide, sub-licensable, and royalty-free right to exploit the manuscript in all forms and media of expression, now known or developed in the future, for educational and scholarly purposes.
- Authors retain the right to present, display, distribute, develop, and republish their manuscript to progress their scientific career provided the original publication source (Estudios Deusto. Revista de Derecho Público) is properly acknowledged and in a way that does not suggest the Publisher endorses them or their use of the work.
- Authors warrant that no permissions or licences of any kind have been granted or will be granted that might infringe the rights granted to the Publisher.
- Authors are solely liable for the consequences that may arise from third parties’ complaints about the submitted manuscript and its publication in Estudios de Deusto. Revista de Derecho Público.
- Users: Estudios de Deusto. Revista de Derecho Público is an Open Access publication. Its content is free for full and immediate access, reading, search, download, distribution and reuse in any medium or format only for non-commercial purposes and in compliance with any applicable copyright legislation, without prior permission from the Publisher or the author(s). In any case, proper acknowledgement of the original publication source must be made and any changes to the original work must be indicated clearly and in a manner that does not suggest the author’s and or Publisher’s endorsement whatsoever. Any other use of its content in any medium or format, now known or developed in the future, requires prior written permission of the copyright holder.
.jpg)
.jpg)
4.jpg)
4.jpg)
4.jpg)
.jpg)
