Responsibility for Violations of Environmental Safety Legislation in Russia and the European Union: a Comparative Legal Study

The features of legislative regulation and criminal liability for environmental offenses are considered using the example of the European Union and individual member states of a political association. A brief description of environmental crime in Russia is given. It is noted that among the key measures to ensure environmental safety, criminal prosecution is highlighted for committing acts that violate criminal law in the field of environmental protection. The author comes to the conclusion that the criminal legal policy of the European Union in the field of ensuring environmental safety is to protect the environment and ensure sustainable development through the use of criminal legal measures and mechanisms to prevent and punish environmentally harmful criminal acts. The author considers the key features of the criminal legislation of the member states of the association to be: a) the reference and blanket nature of the legal norms establishing liability for violation of criminal environmental legislation, which makes it possible to apply them in conjunction with reference to national and sectoral regulatory legal acts; b) establishing strict norms and standards in the field of environmental protection and establishing responsibility for pollution and damage caused to specific areas of the environment; c) approval by states of sectoral criminal legislation that regulates exclusively norms in the field of environmental protection, for example, the Environmental Code (France), the Environmental Code (Sweden), etc.