1. Intro­duc­tion

Traf­fick­ing in human beings destroys indi­vid­u­als’ lives by depriv­ing peo­ple of their dig­ni­ty, free­dom and fun­da­men­tal rights.1 It is often a vio­lent crime com­mit­ted by organ­ised crime net­works. It should have no place in today’s society.

Yet, traf­fick­ing in human beings is a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. It hap­pens in every coun­try and every region. It con­tin­ues to hap­pen in the Euro­pean Union, too. Accord­ing to the lat­est avail­able data, between 2017 and 2018, there were more than 14 000 reg­is­tered victims2 with­in the Euro­pean Union.3 The actu­al num­ber is like­ly to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er as many vic­tims remain undetected.4 Near­ly half of the vic­tims of traf­fick­ing with­in the Euro­pean Union are EU nation­als and a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of them are traf­ficked with­in their own Mem­ber State. The major­i­ty of the vic­tims in the EU are women and girls traf­ficked for sex­u­al exploita­tion. Almost every fourth vic­tim of traf­fick­ing in the EU is a child.5 The

major­i­ty of traf­fick­ers in the EU are EU cit­i­zens and near­ly three quar­ters of per­pe­tra­tors men. This crime brings high prof­its to crim­i­nals and car­ries with it enor­mous human, social and eco­nom­ic costs. In the EU, the eco­nom­ic cost is esti­mat­ed to be up to EUR 2.7 bil­lion in a sin­gle year.6

Fig­ure 1 Repar­ti­tion of reg­is­tered vic­tims by form of exploita­tion in the EU in 2017 and 2018

Fig­ure 2 Repar­ti­tion of reg­is­tered vic­tims by sex in the EU in 2017 and 2018

1 See Arti­cle 83(1) of the Treaty on the Func­tion­ing of the Euro­pean Union and Arti­cle 5(3) of the Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights of the Euro­pean Union.
2 63.7% of iden­ti­fied vic­tims and 36.3% of pre­sumed victims.
3 All EU-27 lev­el data on vic­tims in the doc­u­ment con­cerns years 2017 and 2018. Source: Data Col­lec­tion on Traf­fick­ing in Human beings in the EU (2020); COM(2020) 661 final, 20.10.2020.

4 COM(2020) 661 final, 20.10.2020 and SWD(2020) 226 final, 20.10.2020.
5 Arti­cle 2(6) of Direc­tive 2011/36/EU defines the term ‘child’ mean­ing any per­son below 18 years of age.
6 Study on the eco­nom­ic, social and human costs of traf­fick­ing in human beings with­in the EU (2020); at: https://ec.europa.eu/anti- trafficking/sites/antitrafficking/files/study_on_the_economic_social_and_human_costs_of_trafficking_in_huma n_beings_within_the_eu.pdf.

are

1

Com­bat­ting traf­fick­ing in human beings has long been a pri­or­i­ty for the Euro­pean Union.7 Over the years, progress has been made in many respects. Coop­er­a­tion among key actors, includ­ing at polit­i­cal lev­el, between law enforce­ment and judi­cial author­i­ties, in both nation­al and transna­tion­al con­texts, led to pros­e­cu­tions and con­vic­tions as well as improved iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, assis­tance and sup­port to vic­tims. Aware­ness rais­ing cam­paigns, edu­ca­tion pro­grammes and train­ing ini­tia­tives were car­ried out to reduce the risks of peo­ple becom­ing vic­tims of traf­fick­ing. Stud­ies and reports increased knowl­edge about the phe­nom­e­non, thus con­tribut­ing to devel­op­ing ade­quate response strategies.8

Despite the progress achieved, traf­fick­ing in human beings remains a seri­ous threat in the Euro­pean Union, endan­ger­ing thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als every year, par­tic­u­lar­ly women and chil­dren. Traf­fick­ers prey on social inequal­i­ties as well as eco­nom­ic and social vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of peo­ple, which have been exac­er­bat­ed by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, mak­ing it eas­i­er for per­pe­tra­tors to find vic­tims. The pan­dem­ic also hin­dered vic­tims’ access to jus­tice, assis­tance and sup­port, and ham­pered the crim­i­nal jus­tice response to the crime. More­over, traf­fick­ers moved to a new busi­ness mod­el of online recruit­ment and exploita­tion of victims,9 mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult for law enforce­ment and the judi­cia­ry to respond.

This strat­e­gy iden­ti­fies key pri­or­i­ties with the objec­tive of com­bat­ting traf­fick­ing in human beings more effec­tive­ly. It pro­pos­es con­crete actions, which will be devel­oped in full respect of fun­da­men­tal rights, to iden­ti­fy and stop traf­fick­ing ear­ly on, to go after crim­i­nals by turn­ing traf­fick­ing from a low-risk and high-return crime to high-risk and low-return crime, and to pro­tect the vic­tims and help them rebuild their lives.

Since traf­fick­ing in human beings is a par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous form of organ­ised crime, this strat­e­gy is close­ly inter­linked with the EU Strat­e­gy to Tack­le Organ­ised Crime 2021–2025. While the holis­tic pri­or­i­ties and key actions of the strat­e­gy against organ­ised crime apply to traf­fick­ing in human beings, this strat­e­gy responds to the spe­cif­ic aspects of the crime of human trafficking.