The article intends to analyse the pluses and minuses of traditional environmental criminal law’s dependence on administrative law. The two possible forms of integration between criminal and administrative law, i.e., the so-called ‘purely accessory’ and ‘partially accessory’ models, are evaluated from a comparative perspective, while also considering the European Directive 2008/99/European Community (EC) on the protection of the environment through criminal law, and the new proposal for a Directive, replacing the previous one, put forward by the European Commission in December 2021.