CRIMINAL AND LEGAL PROTECTION OF HEALTH ENVIRONMENT ACCORDING TO THE NEW CRIMINAL CODE OF THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA

Abstract

A conclusion drawn from the presented ideas in this article, is that the protected object in this type of crime, in the national and international criminal legislation, lies in the fundamental human right to healthy and relatively protected environment, and in health environment itself as specific right that serves to the protection of elementary human rights accepted as universal values.

Only by having criminal protection of health environment, as being specific entity, it is possible to have criminal protection of fundamental human rights, i.e. right to life, right to health, right to privacy and family life, right to property and information on the risks.

The new Criminal Code is based on these values and is merging ecocentric and anthropocentric views. All crimes that primarily have to protect environment as specific universal value, are systematized in part XXIV of the Criminal Code, and the heading of that part is: Crimes against health environment.

The third reason in favor of such conclusion is formulated in a way that by determining the protected object of crimes against health environment, it is not protected life and health of people, but health environment as a specific value, that is, right to health environment. Having in mind the importance of health environment and its protection, it is justifiable to have it as specific and primary grouped protected object.

Long time ago, it has been the topic of discussion how important is to deal with the criminal liability of legal entities in relation to protection of health environment. It is very rarely that a need to prescribe criminal sanctions for delicate behavior of legal entities is underlined like in this area.

Ecological crime problematic is requiring review of criminal liability of legal entities. Without over exaggerating, we can say that it is a trend towards introducing criminal liability of legal entities.

Ecological catastrophes caused by legal entities with very hard consequences, environment pollution…. have put the question before us whether we can still ignore the criminal behavior of legal entities. Many crimes like environment pollution… are not only crimes of an individual, but more and more of a legal entity.

All the above questions are forcing our system to introduce criminal liability of legal entities into our criminal legislation and liability of legal entities with the noted tendency of introducing this liability into the area of ecological crime.

Criminal and ecological liability (including legal entities liability) should be only subjective.

The main obstacle in reaching the purpose of imposing sanctions against legal entities was until to date that there has been only objective liability of legal entities for commercial crime. Due to that fact, the minimal subjectivisation has been proposed, that is limited objective liability of legal entities for this kind of crime. In present time, it seems acceptable to continue with the subjectivisation of liability of legal entities, since it is possible, if we have in mind the culpability of liable person as the key precondition for the existence of liability of legal entity, and constituting the culpability of legal entity in the normative sense.

It is of most importance to pass the Law on Liability of Legal Entities for Crimes, as it has been done in many European countries and in the region.