Finland’s Environmental Crime Reform: Why Businesses Should Act Now

Finland's proposed implementation of the EU Environmental Crime Directive would expand criminal exposure and raise corporate fines dramatically. For boards and management teams, now is the time to test whether environmental compliance works in practice.

The EU Environmental Crime Directive resets the baseline: it requires Member States to criminalise a broader range of harmful conduct, impose tougher penalties and improve enforcement and cross-border cooperation. The Directive was adopted in April 2024 and published in the EU Official Journal in May 2024. The transposition deadline was 21 May 2026.

Finland's implementation is now well advanced. After a draft was on public consultation from 17 February to 31 March 2026, the Government submitted its proposal, Government Bill HE 157/2026 vp, to Parliament in September 2026. As transposition is already overdue, the European Commission opened an infringement procedure against Finland in July 2026 over the delay, which adds pressure for the Bill to be enacted without further slippage. Against that backdrop, the amendments are expected to be approved by the current Government.

The proposal would add new offences covering areas such as waste, air pollution, environmentally hazardous products, invasive alien species, environmental destruction and deforestation. Several offences would also have aggravated forms, and the amendments would significantly toughen the applicable penalty scales for a number of acts, with the scope of punishable conduct also expanding in some respects. The practical impact is a wider enforcement perimeter, particularly for businesses with complex operations, regulated products or extended supply chains.

A permit would not necessarily provide a safe harbour. Under the proposed new provisions in chapters 48 and 48a of the Criminal Code, acting under a permit would be treated like acting without one in certain exceptional situations. This would apply where the permitting authority was misled about facts material to the grant of the permit, bribed or coerced, or where the permit manifestly and materially breaches applicable substantive requirements.

A substantial increase in the corporate fine is proposed. However, unlike the earlier draft published in spring 2026, the current proposal limits the higher fine levels to offences implementing the Directive's criminalisation obligations only, rather than extending them to the general corporate fine scale. For offences implementing the Directive, the proposed corporate fine would range from EUR 2,000 to EUR 3 million. For large legal persons, the range would instead be EUR 15,000 to EUR 40 million, capped at five per cent of worldwide turnover (or equivalent income) for the financial year preceding the fine. That makes environmental criminal exposure relevant not only to site operators, but also to group boards, risk functions and investors assessing enterprise-wide downside.

Waste management, manufacturing, chemicals, construction, energy, forestry, logistics and food production are obvious focus sectors, but the reform reaches further. Liability may follow not only from deliberate misconduct, but also from serious failures in supervision, controls or escalation. Boards and management teams should be able to show who owns the risk, how warning signs reach decision-makers and whether corrective action is taken quickly.

This is not simply a technical update to the Criminal Code. It is a shift toward higher financial exposure and closer scrutiny of how environmental risks are governed. With the transposition deadline already missed and an EU infringement procedure under way since July 2026, Parliament has a strong incentive to move quickly.

This post reflects Government Bill HE 157/2026 vp, submitted to Parliament in September 2026, and will be updated once Parliament adopts the final legislation.

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