Latest News
Today, the very, very sad news reached the ENPE Board that Antonio Vercher Noguera passed away totally unexpectedly this weekend at the age of 72. That is a genuine shock. From early days, Antonio, as the foremost environmental public prosecutor in Spain, has been a great friend to and a source of inspiration for ENPE, the European Network of Prosecutors for the Environment. He made a deep impression on all who met him with his commitment to the protection of the environment and his liveliness and incredible energy. In his capacity as director of the ENPE Board, he contributed greatly to the network and its activities.
The ENPE Working Groups workshop, held in Coimbra, Portugal on the 27-28 October 2025 which focussed on the Environmental Crime Directive 2024/ 1203; specifically Prosecuting Legal Persons produced a report which is now available to download (see below).
The report provides an overview of each presentation, what was discussed and a short summary of any questions raised.
Our latest ENPE newsletter, issue 25, November 2025 is now published and available to download. Please do feel free to share widely with your networks and within you organisations as well as with your colleagues and stakeholders involved in enforcement of environmental crime.
The ENPE Working Groups workshop which focussed on prosecuting legal persons under the new Environmental Crime Directive (EU) 2024/ 1203 on the 27-28 October 2025 in Coimbra, Portugal, was attended by 47 delegates and speakers representing 20 different countries. We were delighted to welcome representatives from the European Commission, Eurojust and IMPEL all of whom were able to share their ongoing work in the area. A report, including all available presentations will be shared on the website soon, so do keep checking.
The latest ENPE newsletter for June 2025, Issue 24 has been published and is available for download. This edition includes a number of interesting cases from across Europe, as well as an update on ENPE activities and reports from events attended by ENPE members.
The 4 European environmental crime enforcement networks, IMPEL, EnviCrimeNet, ENPE & EUFJE held their biennial joint conference on 21-22 May 2025 in Bratislava castle, Bratislava, Slovakia.
The ENPE Newsletter for December 2024, Issue 23, is now published and available with details of ENPE activity since June 2024 including the ENPE annual conference.
A workshop on Illegal Pesticides was organised by ENPE’s Waste and Illegal Pesticides (W&IP) Working Group and hosted by our colleagues at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on 28-29 November 2024.
On 10th and 11th of October ENPE and University College Cork (UCC) held a joint conference on environmental crime in Cork, Ireland.
The latest ENPE newsletter - Issue 22 - has been published and is available for download. Please see below for the full version in pdf format.
Directive (EU) 2024/1203 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 April 2024 on the protection of the environment through criminal law and replacing Directives 2008/99/EC and 2009/123/EC has been published and is available here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:L_202401203
This Directive is an important step in the development of environmental criminal law.
ENPE President Anne Brosnan and ENPE Supporting Member Teodor Nita participated in the European Academy of Law (ERA) training workshop on EU legislation to combat Wildlife Crime and Illegal logging in Trier, Germany on the 5th and 6th of February.
Presenting background information on EU environmental law, with case studies included, the training was well received by the delegates who comprised prosecutors and regulatory specialists from across the EU.
We are very pleased to be sharing our latest ENPE newsletter with members, partners and stakeholders. This latest issue, number 21, includes details of a very busy few months since our annual conference in Rome in September. We hope you enjoy it, and as ever, welcome your feedback!
This conference builds on the success of the last 4 Networks online event – Together in the fight against environmental crime in 2021 as well as the two previous conferences held in person in Oxford in 2017 and Utrecht in 2016. Environmental crime is the fourth largest criminal activity in the world and we note, at a global level, the progressive worsening of the situation, as recorded in reports from many institutions.
The European Network of Prosecutors for the Environment, ENPE was established as an informal network of prosecutors in September 2012, in Brussels, Belgium with 8 members representing prosecuting organisations from 7 different European countries. Since then, we have enjoyed steady but significant growth, including expansion beyond Europe to include member organisations from Latin America and North Africa, to become a registered international non-profit association with 59 organisation and individual members, representing 35 different countries.
The following short film from Anne Brosnan, president of ENPE, gives an overview of the work we do and how important prosecuting environmental crime is to the World.
The following video is a webinar from the Waste working group, explaining some of the basic obstacles prosecutors may come across.
Our latest conference was held on the 28th to 30th October 2019, jointly with Eurojust, the EU’s Judicial Cooperation Unit. Click here to view the event website.
This year the conference focused on concrete steps to improve the fight against environmental offences, including serious and organised crime.
Click the button below to read articles and speaker profiles and view videos recorded during the event.
The 2019 ENPE conference was held in conjunction with Eurojust at their superb conference facility in their head office in The Hague, Netherlands from 28-30 October 2019. The conference started with an 'ice-breaker' event at the impressive panorama Mesdaq museum followed by 2 days of intensive plenary, break-out and facilitated workshops sessions focussing on global collaboration and co-operation in the fight against environmental crime.
The European Network of Prosecutors for the Environment (ENPE) promotes the enforcement of environmental criminal law by supporting the operational work of environmental prosecutors. Through the EU LIFE programme, ENPE is managing a five-year project to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of prosecution of environmental crimes through its LIFE-ENPE Working Groups. The LIFE-ENPE waste and air pollution Working Groups held a combination of 2 workshops in Nicosia, Cyprus on the 28-29 March 2019.
Our latest conference was held on the 23 & 24 October 2018, jointly with the Life Reason for Hope project; Life Natura-themis project and the IMPEL Water Pollution Crimes Working Group at the Heraklion Museum of Natural History in Heraklion, Crete. Click here to view the event website.
This workshop, which was held jointly with the UNEP Convention on Migratory Species, and Chaired by Lars Magnusson (ENPE Board member and LIFE-ENPE Wildlife Working Group chair), was attended by 37 delegates and speakers in total, coming from 16 different countries across Europe and Mediterranean region, including Israel, Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria. The venue was the Centro Nacional de Educaion Ambiental (CENEAM), in Valsain near Segovia, Spain. Set in the peaceful surroundings of the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park.
ENPE announces annual conference details: 23-24 October 2018; Natural history museum of Crete, Heraklion, Crete.
In October 2015 the Dublin Circuit Court fined a landfill operator €20 million for nuisance odours and pollution offences. This ground-breaking prosecution on behalf of the Irish Environmental Protection Agency helps send an important deterrent message to environmental criminals.
In September 2016 Italian prosecutors won a precedent case concerning illegal killing of Northern Bald Ibis (Geronticus eremita). This is of interest particularly for the collaborative approach to evidence gathering and successful prosecution, its wider context and the possibility of follow-on action it raises.
For the first time, four key European Environment Networks have joined together to host a conference, held 12 and 13 May 2016 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, of 194 participants from 35 countries in Europe with the explicit task of working to strengthen enforcement of EU environment and nature law and the compliance chain as a whole.