The Aquatic Environment Protection through Criminal Law

Over the recent years, amid unprecedented industry development, the environmentalprotection was a major objective for all EU member governments, including Romania. To thispurpose, at the level of the European Union there have been adopted a series of laws designed toensure a coherent set of legal rules, including in the criminal law. In this context, Romania, in order tomeet the commitments in this area, and also following the needs of environmental protectionobjectives, adopted in turn a legislative package in the field; the most important piece of legislation isthe Government Emergency Ordinance no. 195/2005 on environmental protection. The mentionednormative act provides a series of criminal sanctions where a series of facts found by the legalauthorities are likely to endanger the life or human health, animal or plant. In this paper there areexamined in general the main criminal facts relating to defending and protecting the aquaticenvironment, particularly the Danube, as provided in the mentioned legislative act. We also presenteda series of critical remarks aimed at improving the legislation and thus ensuring a better protection ofthe aquatic environment