Page 235 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

Tackling Environmental Crime throUgh standardized Methodologies

Maurizio Martina, Enrico Costa and Marianna Madia.
Thank you to all those who took part in the conference. One after ano-

ther, by their contributions, they made this experience extremely interesting.
My heart-felt thanks to our excellent chairmen, Dr Mario Tozzi, Dr

Maurizio Santoloci, Paolo Busco and General B. Massimo Mennitti, and to
those who organised and managed the event under the direction of Deputy
Commander of the Carabinieri, General C.A. Antonio Ricciardi. On behalf of
everyone I commend Dr Raffaella Isopi and Colonel Antonio Jannece.

A word of thanks to the TECUM project, which began in 2014 during
Italy’s six-month presidency of the European Union, and which General D.
Enzo Bernardini spoke in detail to us about. The European Commission,
accepting the Italian proposal as one of the projects to receive financial support
from the 2015 Internal Security Fund, awarded the funding to an international
consortium, led by the Carabinieri, and made up of the Environment Ministry,
Interpol, Europol, Cepol, Eurojust, the Spanish Civil Guard and the Romanian
Environment Police, with organisational support from ‘Business and Strategies
Europe’, the consultancy which manages European projects. Very briefly,
TECUM aims to take co-ordinated action at a European level to combat envi-
ronmental crime using standardised methods.

During the conference, ministers, speakers, and, in particular, Ingegnere
Patrone, have touched on the issue of the implementation of Article 8 of Law
125 from 2015, which, as part of a review of responsibilities for the protection
of the environment, land and sea, including agriculture, envisages the reorgani-
sation of the State Forestry Corps and its eventual transformation into another
police force. This transformation is dependent on the maintenance of existing
levels of protection and the safeguarding of the role currently played by the
Corps, its areas of specialisation and its professional competencies. Indications
from the government and motions put forward by members of parliament sug-
gest that it is the Carabinieri who are the police force closest to the Corps in
terms of its activities and organisation.

The transfer of the majority of the State Forestry Department’s staff and
responsibilities to the Carabinieri Corps is therefore fully in accordance with
the rationale of the enabling act, in that it makes it possible to preserve the

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