IZAZOVI U DEFINISANjU EKOCIDA U PRAVU EVROPSKE UNIJE

Abstract

In recent years, at the international level, there have been more and more pronounced efforts to define the concept of ecocide and to prescribe it as an international criminal offense in the Statute of the permanent International Criminal Court. Not only is the professional public divided as to whether ecocide should be a criminal offense within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, in which sense numerous arguments are presented for and against, but there are also numerous challenges in defining the concept of ecocide. Since at the level of the European Union, but also outside it, there are sporadic examples of national states that have expressed their intention to criminalize ecocide within their national legislations, the aim of the paper is to point out different approaches to defining the concept of ecocide and the ways in which national legislations approach this issue, for the sake of future harmonization of the laws of the European Union countries on this matter.