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Acts causing environmental pollution recorded by the police

How many acts that cause environmental pollution or degradation did the police record in each European country, for its population?

30 of 30 shown in the list

offences recorded per 100,000 inhabitants

  1. Denmark144.7 2023
  2. Luxembourg23.9 2023
  3. Sweden13.5 2023
  4. Germany11.0 2023
  5. Finland7.4 2023
  6. Belgium4.1 2023
  7. Albania3.0 2023
  8. Norway3.0 2023
  9. Italy2.7 2023
  10. Netherlands2.1 2023
  11. Austria1.5 2023
  12. Serbia1.5 2023
  13. Bulgaria1.4 2023
  14. Portugal1.2 2023
  15. France1.1 2023
  16. Slovenia0.9 2023
  17. Czechia0.4 2023
  18. Greece0.4 2023
  19. Hungary0.4 2023
  20. Slovakia0.4 2023
  21. Spain0.3 2023
  22. Croatia0.2 2023
  23. Latvia0.2 2023
  24. Lithuania0.2 2023
  25. Malta0.2 2023

Source: Eurostat, Police-recorded offences by offence category (crim_off_cat). Data for 2023. What it counts, how to cite it and the data

At a glance

  • 30 countries or territories have a figure.
  • The highest is Denmark at 144.7 (2023) and the lowest is Estonia at 0.0 (2023).
  • The middle value (the median) is 1.0.

What it counts

Offences recorded by the police under the category “Acts that cause environmental pollution or degradation” of the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS), per 100,000 inhabitants, in the latest year each country reports (since 2019).

What it leaves out, and how far to trust a comparison

Police-recorded crime depends on how much is reported to the police, on how each police force records it and on how each country defines the offence, so a difference between countries can reflect recording and reporting at least as much as a real difference. A higher figure can mean more crime, more reporting or more complete recording. It is not a ranking of how safe a country is, and it counts only what reached the police. Environmental offences are often handled by environmental agencies and not the police, so the police figure shows only part of the picture.

Source

Eurostat: Police-recorded offences by offence category (crim_off_cat). Source licence: CC BY 4.0. Data retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25.

Cite this chart

Free to use in teaching, articles, reports and slides, with credit. Our compilation is licensed CC BY 4.0; the source publishes the underlying data under its own licence, shown below.

Reference (APA style)

TheLawToKnow. (2026). Acts causing environmental pollution recorded by the police [Chart]. Law in Charts. https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/environmental-pollution-recorded. Data: Eurostat, Police-recorded offences by offence category (crim_off_cat), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/crim_off_cat/default/table (data retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25).

Short credit for slides and websites

Chart: TheLawToKnow, Law in Charts (https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/environmental-pollution-recorded). Data: Eurostat.

BibTeX

@misc{environmentalpollutionrecorded2026,
  author = {{TheLawToKnow}},
  title = {Acts causing environmental pollution recorded by the police},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Law in Charts},
  url = {https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/environmental-pollution-recorded},
  note = {Data: Eurostat, Police-recorded offences by offence category (crim_off_cat), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/crim_off_cat/default/table. Retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25.}
}

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