The heaviest sentence -- at least five to 10 years of jail -- would apply to "green crimes" committed intentionally that killed or seriously injured people. Other offences would be punished by at least one to three years in prison.

The Commission, which is due to adopt the proposal on Friday, says "green crimes" are on the rise, increasingly causing cross-border damage, and that EU states' measures are insufficient to stop them.

Member states and the European Parliament must approve the draft directive for it to take effect, overriding national laws. It touches on the sensitive issue of the division of powers between national and EU law over criminal penalties.

The move would be the first time EU-wide minimum sentences were applied to environmental crimes. The EU already sets such standards for terrorism and drug trafficking.

Companies could be fined at least 750,000 to 1.5 million euros when a senior executive is responsible for an environmental offence that kills or seriously injures someone.

Firms would also be forced to clean up and directors could be removed from their jobs.

CONTROVERSY

"In order to achieve effective protection of the environment, there is a particular need for more dissuasive sanctions for environmentally harmful activities," the draft proposal said.

It said measures taken by the bloc's 27 states individually are insufficient and vary too much, allowing companies to shop around for the most lenient legislation in the borderless bloc.

But its proposal prompted some angry reactions.

"The European Commission is using the environmental agenda as an excuse to massively increase its powers at the expense of national parliaments. This is a very slippery slope," British Conservative EU lawmaker Syed Kamall said.

Environmental group Greenpeace welcomed the move.

"It's certainly an improvement on the current situation, some member states only have administrative fines," spokeswoman Katharine Mill said.

But she urged the bloc to go further, saying the proposed fines were too low and the scope of the proposal should be wider, to include for instance import of illegal timber.

The Commission and EU states have long been fighting over their respective powers regarding environmental criminal law.

The EU executive successfully sued member states after they adopted in 2003 their own, much less far-reaching EU "green crime" law.