The European Commission wants to punish the most serious crimes against the environment.
This would involve five- to 10-year minimum prison terms and fines of up to €1.5 million, a draft proposal shows.
The European Commission executive is to seek EU-wide minimum sentences for nine offences ranging from dumping toxic waste to unsafe transport of hazardous materials, harming protected plants or species, and unlawful trade in ozone-depleting substances.
The heaviest sentence - at least five to 10 years in prison - would apply to "green crimes" committed intentionally that killed or seriously injured people.
Other offences would be punished by at least one to three years in prison.
The commission, which is due to adopt the proposal tomorrow, says "green crimes" are on the rise, increasingly causing cross-border damage, and that EU states' measures are insufficient to stop them.
Member states and the European Parliament must approve the draft directive for it to take effect, thus overriding national laws.
It touches on the sensitive issue of the division of powers between national and EU law over criminal penalties.
The move would be the first time EU-wide minimum sentences were applied to environmental crimes.
The EU already sets such standards for the offences of terrorism and drug trafficking.
Companies could be fined at least €750,000 to €1.5 million when a senior executive is responsible for an environmental offence that kills or seriously injures someone.
Firms would also be forced to clean up and directors could be removed from their jobs.
"In order to achieve effective protection of the environment, there is a particular need for more dissuasive sanctions for environmentally harmful activities," the draft proposal says.
It says measures taken by the bloc's 27 states individually are insufficient and vary too much, allowing companies to shop around for the most lenient legislation in the borderless bloc.
But its contents prompted some angry reactions.
"The European Commission is using the environmental agenda as an excuse to massively increase its powers at the expense of national parliaments. This is a very slippery slope," British Conservative EU lawmaker Syed Kamall said.
Environmental group Greenpeace welcomed the move, however.
"It's certainly an improvement on the current situation; some member states only have administrative fines," spokeswoman Katharine Mill said.
But she urged the EU to go further, saying the proposed fines were too low and the scope of the proposal should be wider, to include for instance the import of illegal timber.
The commission and EU states have long been fighting over their respective powers regarding environmental criminal law.
The EU executive successfully sued member states after they adopted in 2003 their own, much less far-reaching EU "green crime" law.
The bloc's top court annulled the EU states' decision in 2005, saying that drafting proposals on the protection of the environment was part of the commission's remit. - ( Reuters)