Welcome to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcast on the EU response to organised crime.

Organised crime is a growing threat to the EU and its citizens, and new digital technologies combined with open borders and free trade only make it easier for criminals.

But the EU is stepping up police and judicial cooperation as well as information sharing in order to stay one step ahead of them and make sure that crime does not pay.

Stay with us.

Drug trafficking, trafficking and human beings, migrant smuggling, document fraud, cybercrime, firearms trafficking, environmental crime, organized property crime, economic and financial crime, you name it.

Organized crime takes several forms and it costs the European Union between 218 and 282 billion

euros annually. It is certainly a lucrative business. Considering its proceeds are estimated at around

110 billion a year and only 1% of that is confiscated. A growing number of organised crime groups are active in the EU, around 5,000 according

to Europol, and they're extremely flexible and difficult to track, as the structures are often

loose or ad hoc and profit from the cover of an anonymous cyberspace.

Nearly half of these groups are involved in more than one criminal activity in order to mitigate

risks, reduce operational costs and maximise profits.

So what are the main criminal activities in the EU?

Let's have a look.

Drug trafficking has been and continues to be one of the favourite activities of organised criminal groups.

This includes cannabis, cocaine and increasingly synthetic drugs.

In 2019 alone, the EU sees 75 tonnes of drugs and chemicals.

Trafficking in human beings is another serious organised crime.

Thousands of people are trafficked into the

EU every year and forced into the sex business or exploited for labour or forced criminality.

And most of them are women and children. The migrant smuggling business has also become a large,

profitable and sophisticated criminal market. In 2015, at the height of the migration crisis,

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