The Beach Zone Act should be more strictly enforced.
ALARM: Ecocrime raises the alarm about crime in the beach zone in its recent threat report. First State Attorney Hans Tore Høviskeland believes that softening the beach law sends the wrong signal. Photo: Tore Meek / NTB scanpix sea view
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Manager: This is an editorial from Dagbladet, and expresses the newspaper’s views. Dagbladet’s political editor is responsible for the editorial.
Published
Thursday 05 May 2022 – 08:18
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The systematic and intentional crime in the beach zone has been given a separate chapter in Økokrim’s recent threat assessment, reports NRK. Resourceful people take action, expand and set up illegal barriers that privatize areas that everyone should have access to. This is done without significant risk of sanctions. In the municipalities, dispensations are generously distributed. It has become the rule rather than the exception in some areas in the south.
THANK YOU DANISH: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj addressed the Danish people at a commemoration of the liberation of Denmark after World War II. Video: Jyllands-Posten / Politiken. sea view
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At the same time, politicians want to soften the legislation. The government will make it easier to build in the beach zone in areas that are not under as much pressure as around the Oslo Fjord and in Sørlandet. Not least, they want municipalities to have greater autonomy and avoid being overruled by the state administrator. The Conservatives recently put forward a proposal for a statute of limitations for old offenses, a kind of amnesty for people who feel superior to the law, even though the party claims it is out of consideration for the municipalities’ capacity to take care of the beach law.
Both proposals can seem undramatic, but in our opinion contributes to further weakening respect for the protection rules and thus makes prevention even more difficult. They are going in the wrong direction. Chief State Attorney Hans Tore Høviskeland in Økokrim believes that the Conservative Party’s amnesty sends a signal that it is not so important to follow up on violations of the Planning and Building Act in the beach zone. “If it becomes known that the municipalities do not follow up, it can lead to more people taking action and taking the chance that the violation will not be discovered,” he told NRK. This is how it seems that many are already wondering. The fear of being caught is obviously not great.
Ecocrime assessment of the development in the beach zone should put a shock in the politicians, not make them worry that the beach law is too strict or too demanding to enforce. It is thus a question of systematic and intentional crime that often does irreparable damage and deprives the public of a good. Ecocrime also means seeing a pattern in the cases. It is usually resourceful people who take care of themselves, and who use lawyers when they are caught. It is perceived as demanding for the municipalities.
When Ecocrime sounds the alarm about the development, an emergency call is approaching. The alarm has gone off before and, among other things, in a report of concern from the civil ombudsman a couple of years ago. Then it is not time to soften the legislation and send signals that it is not so important to enforce.
