Criminal environmental protection: international practices and priorities for improving

Abstract
The purpose of the research is to reveal international practices, criminal law protection and the system of punishments for environmental crimes in the field of environmental protection. Main content. The paper uses a comparative method to study the criminal environmental protection international practices of some European Union countries, in particular Spain, Germany and Austria. In addition, the study of model criminal law standards of the EU made it possible to evaluate them as a factor that leads to the unification and universalization of the criminal legislation of the EU countries in the field of environmental protection, harmonization of criminal law and related sectors. Methodology: Research of materials and methods based on the analysis of documentary sources and regulatory legal acts of foreign countries. The dialectical method of cognizing the social reality facts is the basis on which the formal legal and rather-legal approaches are largely based. Conclusions. The absence of developed unified approaches to its unification and practical application in the countries of Europe and Asia has been established. Attention is focused on the attempt of individual countries (the Republic of Poland, the Republic of Lithuania) to determine the criteria for the correlation of main and additional punishments, to establish criteria for the equivalent application of sanctions related to isolation and without isolation, and also to expand the boundaries of judicial review in the field of setting the degree and type of measures of criminal liability, depending on the factual and legal circumstances of the criminal case.