Though causing water and soil contamination and serious threats to the natural environment and human well-being, waste crime has not been considered a serious crime in any society. Moreover, while the problem of waste crime has often been portrayed as the result of organized crime’s involvement in the legitimate economy, scant attention has been given to the role of legitimate economic operators in illegal waste diversion activities. Seeking profitability and cost reduction, respected companies rationally opt for managing waste illegally in the course of everyday business activities when faced with crime opportunities. Existing research has suggested that legislative loopholes or complex and ambiguous law rules can provide crime opportunities, which profit-driven market players may choose to exploit at the expense of the environment. These studies so far have been hampered by the lack of an empirical analysis of whether existing laws may facilitate or encourage illegal waste diversion activities. The present dissertation sought to examine the problem, which is mainly legal in nature, from a criminological perspective. It examined waste crime committed by legitimate economic operators, focusing specifically on the crime prosecuted in Italy under the heading of illegal traffic of waste. The purpose of such crime-specific focus was to qualitatively explore how this specific type of waste crime is committed and further identify crime opportunities provided by the legal environment in which waste management activities regularly take place. More specifically, the research attempted to determine whether legislative shortcomings within the legislation that regulates the waste management sector may bestow opportunities to lawbreaking. The analysis of the data sources in the study provided reliable evidence about the involvement of legitimate market players in illegal waste diversion activities. The research not only revealed the process through which illegal waste traffic is perpetrated by legitimate market players, but also uncovered potential crime opportunities provided by the legislation that governs the waste management sector. Furthermore, the findings indicated that shortcomings within administrative controls play a substantial role in facilitating and encouraging illegal waste diversion activities. The results form the basis for inductive inferences about the existence of a relationship between crime opportunities provided by the law and administrative controls, and economic operators’ involvement in waste crime.

This doctoral thesis focuses on certain private actors that operate transnationally in fields relevant to administrative law, such as food security, environmental protection, pharmaceuticals and medical device regulation. We are only interested in some of the activities carried out by these private actors, concretely those which have an effect that we have termed “regulatory impact”. In this work, we use the term “regulatory” as a meta-juridical concept, in order to understand the capacity that characterizes the activities of our transnational private actors to influence the final recipients in the respective fields. These activities do not result in the coercive imposition of a certain behaviour or an obligation on recipients (whether public or private subjects). Instead, they materialise through a series of varied acts with a flexible nature and a non-binding nature (e.g. technical norms or private standards, guidelines, recommendations or other instruments). However, these activities have considerable multiplier effects on the analysed fields as a consequence of their possible impact (in particular, on the protection of certain fundamental rights recognised at an European level). This makes their study from a legal-administrative perspective all the more relevant. In our view, the branch of administrative law is perhaps the most experienced in this matter. In particular, administrative doctrine has shown the greatest interest in understanding how far certain private actors may intervene in the regulatory chain in a way that is analogous or parallel –and not substitutive– to that of the Public Administration itself in these or other comparable fields. Depending on the case studies, administrative law can be a tool for finding out and understanding how our private legal actors operate transnationally and how they carry out their activities. Likewise, many of the internal rules and codes of conduct that make up the internal policy of our private actors contain procedural criteria or practices. These rules include some of the cultural values of administrative law, particularly participation and transparency. These criteria or practices have a certain similarity to those typically procedural principles of a legal-administrative nature that govern the activity of the Public Administration. The participation and transparency function as “strategies” which, in certain cases, set out to substantiate said activities of some private actors, in order to put in place harmonized and more efficient instruments in the various sectors in which they operate. On the one hand, with the incorporation of the practice of participation, some private actors recognize multiple subjects and stakeholders the opportunity to take part in the regulatory task, in order to give voice to their claims and deliberate collectively. On the other, sometimes the practice of transparency allows the global community to know and understand how these private actors carry out their activities. As a basis, we rely on extant studies in administrative doctrine pertaining to associated matters and fields. We intend to address, in this context and from a subjective viewpoint, the meaning of such practices and criteria and how they operate within the structural framework of transnational private actors. / Nuestra tesis doctoral toma en consideración algunos actores privados que operan a nivel transnacional en sectores de relevancia para el Derecho administrativo, tales como la seguridad alimentaria, la protección ambiental, la regulación farmacéutica y de los dispositivos sanitarios. De esos actores privados nos interesan sólo algunas de las actividades que prestan y que aquí denominamos de “impacto regulador”. Ese “impacto regulador” se presenta en nuestro trabajo como un concepto meta-jurídico que empleamos de manera amplia para comprender la capacidad que caracteriza las actividades que prestan nuestros actores privados transnacionales para influir sobre los destinatarios finales en los respectivos sectores. Conviene indicar que esas actividades no se traducen en la imposición coactiva de un determinado comportamiento o una obligación a sus destinatarios (ya sean sujetos públicos como privados), pues se materializan a través de una serie de actos de diversa índole –tales como normas técnicas o estándares privados, directrices, recomendaciones u otros instrumentos– de naturaleza flexible y de carácter no vinculante. No obstante, y como se verá, son considerables los efectos multiplicadores que tales actividades despliegan sobre los sectores objeto de análisis, como consecuencia del impacto que pudieran generar –en particular sobre la protección de determinados derechos fundamentales reconocidos a nivel europeo– y de ahí su relevancia para ser estudiado desde la perspectiva jurídico-administrativa. Y es que consideramos que la rama del Derecho administrativo es, quizás, la más experimentada en este campo, máxime cuando es la doctrina administrativista la que mayor interés ha demostrado en comprender en qué medida ciertos actores privados pueden llegar a intervenir en la cadena regulatoria de forma análoga o paralela –que no sustitutiva– a como lo ha podido venir haciendo hasta ahora la propia Administración en esos u otros ámbitos análogos. En función de los casos de estudio, el Derecho administrativo podría interesarse por conocer y comprender cómo nuestros actores de naturaleza jurídica privada operan a nivel transnacional y llevan a cabo sus actividades de impacto regulador. Observamos, además, que buena parte de los reglamentos internos y códigos de conducta que conforman la política interna de nuestros actores privados contienen criterios o prácticas de procedimiento que guardan una cierta similitud con aquellas normas típicamente procedimentales de naturaleza jurídico-administrativa que rigen la actividad de la Administración. Estas representan, por analogía y de manera abstracta, algunos de los valores de la cultura del Derecho administrativo como son, en particular, la participación y la transparencia. En algunos casos, tales criterios o prácticas permiten a determinadas realidades privadas –especialmente aquellas donde han adquirido carta de naturaleza– poner en marcha instrumentos armonizados y más eficientes en los diversos sectores en los que estos se proyectan. Por un lado, con la incorporación de la práctica de la participación, algunos actores privados reconocen a múltiples sujetos e intereses especialmente relevantes la oportunidad de intervenir en la tarea regulatoria, a fin de dar voz a sus pretensiones, deliberar y decidir de manera compartida. Por otro lado, la práctica de la transparencia permite a la comunidad global, si cabe, conocer y comprender cómo llevan a cabo sus actividades. En este orden de cosas, y desde el plano subjetivo, con nuestro trabajo pretendemos indagar –apoyándonos en los estudios ya realizados por parte de la doctrina administrativista en materias y sectores concomitantes– sobre el verdadero sentido de tales criterios o prácticas y de qué manera operan dentro de este marco estructural de actores privados transnacionales.