Climate law: in committee, the deputies vote the new offense of "ecocide"

A first step taken.

The deputies meeting in committee voted in the night of Thursday to Friday the creation of a new controversial offense of "ecocide", among a battery of measures intended to strengthen the judicial arsenal against the attacks on the environment.

The creation of this new offense, one of the flagship measures of the “Climate and Resilience” bill examined by a special committee, had been severely judged both by the members of the Citizen's Climate Convention (CCC) and by legal experts from the Board of state.

The first, who had called for the creation of a "crime" of ecocide, had given it a score of "2.7 / 10" when evaluating the transposition of the CCC proposals into the text of the law.

The second had pointed out the risk of unconstitutionality of this measure considered confusing and poorly put together.

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In a special committee, however, the deputies only modified the drafting of the government project at the margin, despite an attempt to rewrite the co-rapporteur, the Modem Erwan Balanant, anxious to avoid the caudine forks of the Constitutional Council which will be certainly seized of the text, once adopted by the Parliament.

"Potemkin Village"

The Minister of the Energy Transition, Barbara Pompili, opposed it to an end of inadmissibility by betting on the “legal innovation” which governs the measure.

"The offenses of ecocide apply to the most serious attacks on the environment at the national level," she explained.

They provide for sentences of up to 10 years in prison and a 4.5 million euro fine.

The offense of "ecocide" is based on a strengthening of the penal sanctions applicable in the event of water, air and soil pollution but is characterized by the "intentionality" of the pollution.

For diametrically opposed reasons, Mathilde Panot denounced "a regression" believing that "Bercy", anxious to preserve companies in the face of new legal risks, had "won the arbitrations", while the LR Julien Aubert mocked a new measure which he compared to the “Potemkin village” with regard to the concept of the crime of ecocide debated for decades at the level of international justice.

This one has been brandished about the drying up of the Aral Sea or the use of Agent Orange by the US military in Vietnam.

"You take the storefront [...] but there is nothing behind", Julien Aubert mocked.

End of committee debates

During this last evening of examination of the text in committee before its passage in the hemicycle from March 29, the deputies also created a "general" offense of endangering the environment, punishable by 3 years of prison and a fine of 300,000 euros.

They have inflated the amount of a whole series of fines provided for by articles of the environmental code which can now go up to 100,000 euros.

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Citizens' convention: 110 km / h, tax on dividends, ecocide ... Macron's three refusals

Against the backdrop of the Lubrizol disaster in Rouen, the government also passed an amendment creating an industrial risk investigation and analysis office which will conduct investigations into the causes and consequences of the most important accidents.

After a little less than two weeks of discussions, the deputies completed the examination of the whole of the text shortly before one o'clock in the morning.