Environmental protection represents a complex and one of the most discussed issues, currently under consideration within the legal framework. The author in this article focuses on the environmental protection via the instruments of substantive criminal law in the Slovak Republic and thus represents a detailed analysis of the current legal regulation contained in the Criminal Code, which concentrates these instruments into 13 criminal merits analysed in part II of the presented article. These instruments can be considered effective with regard to preserving as well as improving the environmental quality — through the punishment of perpetrators of the most serious acts breaching the rules of environmental protection, by which the ideal of criminal justice is achieved (or can be achieved).
