Europol
| Author | Evangelos Stevgioulis |
| Pages | 37-40 |
Page 37
Organized crime has developed in Europe and around the world at an alarming speed. The opening of the borders throughout Europe, the vast increase in trade and social mobility, and the development of international transportation and communication systems have played a major part in the internationalization of crime. Criminal networks aiming at expanding the scope and geographical range of their activities are active worldwide, and they use modern technology and develop new methods and techniques to facilitate their international contacts.
Criminals take full advantage of one of the main principles of the European Union (EU): the free movement of persons, goods, services, and capital. Along with them, criminals also move and operate across the Continent. Although restrictions and border controls still exist for law enforcement agencies, EU law enforcement agents have to work under a number of different legal systems, using several official languages. They often face major difficulties in understanding the practical and legal differences among different EU countries.
A criminal group can operate in one or several countries, usually choosing the country where fiscal laws may be more favorable or even nonexistent, or the law enforcement system remains "flexible." Serious criminal offenses are not punishable everywhere in the same strict way, due to legal discrepancies from region to region. Mutual assistance in international investigations and criminal inquiries is often slow and bureaucratic, and full of legal, political, and administrative red tape. It is also known in the international law enforcement community that a response to a simple query or request for information might take days or weeks. This delay may be destructive when urgent operations, such as intercepting a drug shipment, searching a building, or detaining an individual, are necessary. Suspects are given time to destroy evidence, move the proceeds of crime to a safe place, or even escape arrest.
The difficulties described above constituted the basis on which the EU member states justified their establishment of a European police office. Europol is a common European law enforcement organization whose aim is to act in a support capacity by providing a wide range of services to member states' law enforcement authorities to fight organized crime in a concerted and efficient way.
The findings of the annual EU Organized Crime Report, elaborated by Europol on the basis of member states' contributions, have shown that in the early years of the twenty-first century there exist some four thousand criminal groups consisting of around forty thousand members throughout Europe. Organized crime groups in the European Union are involved in all types of crime, especially drug trafficking, trafficking in human beings, commodity smuggling, fraud, and other forms of financial and property crime. In addition, they increasingly seem to mix low-risk and high-risk activities—for instance, drug trafficking alongside cigarette smuggling. Among the organized crime groups that pose a significant threat to the European Union, about half of them are indigenous groups or dominated by nationals from the member states.
The traditional monolithic and strongly hierarchical structures of criminal organizations, as well as the increasing
Page 38
emergence of more flexible networks that can easily adapt and respond to new requirements and challenges, have became more and more...
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