What Article 351 of the Criminal Code punishes
Article 351 defines the offence of arson proper, that is, fire-setting that creates a real danger to human life or physical integrity. It sits among the offences against collective safety because the protected legal interest is not only the property damaged by the fire, but the safety of anyone who might be affected by it, regardless of whether they are ultimately injured or not. It is precisely that danger to life that separates this offence from the aggravated fire damage in Article 266, which applies where the fire does not create that danger to life.
The article itself expressly refers to Article 266 for cases where, despite a fire having been started, there is no danger to life or physical integrity: in that case, the acts are punished as aggravated damage rather than as arson proper, carrying a substantially lower penalty.
Penalty
The penalty is ten to twenty years in prison, one of the harshest in the Criminal Code outside offences against life. However, courts may impose the penalty one degree lower in light of the lesser scale of the danger caused and the other circumstances of the case, which introduces meaningful room for judicial individualisation.
Common scenarios
This offence typically applies to someone who sets fire to a home, a shop, a residential building or any space occupied by people at the time of the events, or in circumstances where their presence is foreseeable, creating a real risk that they could be trapped or affected by smoke or flames. It also covers fires started in enclosed spaces with limited exits —nightclubs, entertainment venues, underground car parks— where the risk to the life of those inside is especially high, regardless of the offender's ultimate intent.
Defense strategy
Given the severity of the penalty, the defense must rigorously examine whether, at the specific moment of the fire, there was actually a danger to the life or physical integrity of identifiable people, or whether, on the contrary, the building was unoccupied with no foreseeable presence of anyone, which would redirect the case to Article 266 and a much lower penalty. Expert evidence on the origin and spread of the fire, and on the existence of escape routes and the real presence of people, is decisive. The possibility of the court applying the penalty one degree lower for the lesser scale of danger should also be explored, arguing factors such as quick extinguishing, the absence of injured persons, or the genuinely limited scope of the risk created.