Interconnections between International and National Criminal Law Relevant to Energy Security

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. The relevance of the research topic is determined, firstly, by the special socio-economic and international importance of energy, the technical complexity of energy facilities and at the same time, their increased vulnerability, potential threat to the environment, and secondly, by the needs to ensure the safety of energy activities in its various forms with the help of international and national law. Despite the fact that in the science of international law considerable attention is paid to the problem of the relationship between international and national law, there are no special comprehensive studies on the problem of the relationship between international and national law in the field of ensuring the safety of energy activities. In turn, the category “energy security”, in contrast to the outwardly similar and organically related (but not identical) category “energy security”, has not yet received a comprehensive (including within the framework of legal science) research, is not legalized in law. The purpose of the work is to substantively identify the possibility and necessity of legalizing the category of "energy security" and the potential for improving national law (in particular, national criminal legislation) on the circumstances of Russia's participation in international treaties, fulfilling international legal obligations and increasing the efficiency of legal regulation, protecting national interests in the energy sector.MATERIALS AND METHODS. Within this research international treaties and documents of the international law and national legislation of States are analyzed. As a research method, the general scientific and special methods of enquiry is used, including the comparative legal and the formal legal methods.RESEARCH RESULTS. In modern conditions, there is a need to legalize the category of “safety of energy activities”, which, in contrast to the “energy safety” category, has not yet received due attention, including in legal research. The safety of energy activities has various sections, and its legal support includes a wide range of measures and regulators of an international legal and national legal nature. In practice, the relationship between international legal and national legal regulators, their combination and composition in the process of ensuring the safety of energy activities (as applied to individual energy facilities, in particular, floating nuclear power plants) can take complex, combined forms. Counteraction to acts of unlawful interference that infringe on the interests of the safety of energy activities is carried out in the interconnection of international criminal law and national criminal law. The author's position on the question of the systemic affiliation of international criminal law and its relationship with national criminal law is indicated. It is shown that in numerous international treaties and other international documents on environmental protection in connection with the conduct of energy activities, with rare exceptions, there is no mention of criminal-legal measures to counter relevant environmental offenses; accordingly, this issue is resolved at the level of the national criminal law of states. The special and most developed international legal documents on the issues of ensuring the anti-criminal security of energy activities are the Protocols for the suppression of unlawful acts against the security of fixed platforms (1988 and 2005, respectively). The need for the implementation of international legal provisions into national criminal legislation is substantively indicated. A legislative gap was identified and the potential for improving the norms of national legislation on the criminal law protection of trunk pipelines was identified, taking into account the provisions of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. The main conclusions of the study are as follows. Firstly, the category "safety of energy activities" in its content is not identical to the category of “energy safety”, while it includes internal (from the point of view of the safety of energy facilities, fuel and energy complex, people involved in the process of their operation) and external (from the point of view of in terms of risks and threats for the environment from the energy activity itself), as well as a number of “sections” (anti-criminal security, industrial and information security, environmental safety), taking into account the nature of the relevant threats. Secondly, the national criminal legislation in the field of ensuring the safety of energy activities has significant potential for improvement, based on the instrument of national legal implementation of legally binding provisions of international treaties for the state. On the fact of Russia's participation in the Protocol for the suppression of unlawful acts against the safety of fixed platforms located on the continental shelf, 1988, it is necessary to implement the provisions of this international legal act in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, thereby fulfilling the international legal obligation of the state and increasing efficiency criminal law protection of these objects of the fuel and energy complex. It is also necessary to bring the norms on the criminal law protection of underwater cables and pipelines in the current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in accordance with the provisions of the international treaty of the Russian Federation – the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 (Article 113 “Breakage or damage of a submarine cable or pipeline”).