FRANCE Law and Practice Contributed by: Carine Le Roy-Gleizes, Corentin Chevallier, Alice Messin-Roizard and Antoine Juquin, UGGC Avocats
Prefects are responsible for issuing orders or authori- sations relating to classified facilities and for ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. To do so, prefects rely on local administrative services – such as the Regional Directorates for the Environment, Plan- ning and Housing (DREAL) as well as the Departmen- tal Directorate of the Territories (DDT) ‒ all of which participate in the local implementation of national pol- icy. At a local level (communes), mayors also exercise environmental-related enforcement (eg, waste law). Moreover, the Environmental Authority, an advisory body on projects likely to affect the environment, delivers an opinion on the quality of the environmental impact assessment (see 4.2 Environmental Permits/ Approvals ). The Environmental Authority shall remain totally independent and be distinct from the authority in charge of delivering permits. Finally, other specific agencies play a role in some defined sectors – eg, the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) and the Regional Health Agency (ARS). Also, the Office Français de la Biodiversité (OFB) was cre- ated in 2019: it aims to better protect biodiversity by merging all the services responsible for the preserva- tion of French ecosystems into a single agency. 2.2 Co-Operation Globally, local-level authorities may work together to deal with an environmental issue that has, for example, sanitary implications ‒ as they may be complementary. Specifically, the Inter-Services Mission for Water and Nature (Mission Inter-Services de l’Eau et de la Nature, or MISEN) is an authority whose goal is to facilitate coherence in enforcing and financing actions for the implementation of water and biodiversity policies. MISEN includes various regional authorities such as DREAL, the Regional Directorate of Food, Agriculture and Forestry (DRAAF), the DDT and the OFB, among others. MISEN operates under the authority of the pre- fect in each department. Additionally, the Operational Committee to Combat Environmental Crime (COLDEN), created in Septem- ber 2023, is an authority that develops and implements strategies that mobilise the full range of administra- tive and legal levers to combat environmental crime. COLDEN may impose both administrative and crimi-
nal sanctions, has a wide range of stakeholders ‒ for example, magistrates, public prosecutors, the DDT, DREAL, the OFB and the national police ‒ and oper- ates under the authority of a prosecutor. 3. Environmental Protections 3.1 Protection of Environmental Assets The protection of environmental assets in France is mainly governed by the French Environmental Code, which groups together the laws and regulations gov- erning environmental protection. This Code protects the natural heritage ‒ ie, all fauna, flora, geological, soil, mineralogical, paleontological and ecological resources – and is divided into several “books” and chapters, each dedicated to a particular asset. These provisions apply to all French territories. On top of these rules, certain rules laid down by EU regula- tions also apply to the protection of environmental assets. For instance, EU Regulation 2024/1991 of June 2024 aims at restoring degraded terrestrial and marine ecosystems in all EU countries. 3.2 Breaching Protections Violating environmental protection rules can lead to three different types of sanction: administrative, criminal and civil. The administration plays the role of regulator in environmental protection and can impose numerous obligations, with penalties for non- compliance. For the same offence in which the admin- istration intervenes, criminal sanctions may also be imposed, and the offender may be held civilly liable. By way of example, in the emblematic case of the Erika, the companies involved were sanctioned at all three levels. 4. Environmental Incidents and Permits 4.1 Investigative and Access Powers Under French law, the environmental authorities have investigative and access powers with regard to envi- ronmental incidents and breaches of law/permits. They have both administrative and criminal enforce- ment rights.
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