The European Commission on Tuesday adopted the EU Strategy towards the Eradication of Trafficking in Human Beings, a set of concrete and practical measures to be implemented over the next five years.
The measures include establishment of national law enforcement units specialized in human trafficking and the creation of joint European investigation teams to prosecute cross-border trafficking cases.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, said "ensuring that victims can get support and bringing traffickers to justice is at the heart of our actions."
The new European strategy includes prevention, protection and support of the victims, as well as prosecution of the traffickers. It identifies five priorities and outlines a series of initiatives for each of them, such as supporting the establishment of national law enforcement units specialized in human trafficking, Creating joint investigation teams and involving Europol and Eurojust in all cross-border trafficking cases, providing clear information to victims on their rights under EU law and national legislation, creating an EU mechanism to better identify, refer, protect and assist trafficked victims, and establishing a European Business Coalition against trafficking in Human Beings to improve cooperation between companies and stakeholders.
Hundreds of thousands of people are trafficked in the EU every year. Women and men, boys and girls in vulnerable positions are traded for the purpose of sexual or labor exploitation, removal of organs, begging, domestic servitude, forced marriage, illegal adoption as well as other forms of exploitation.
Recent estimates from the International Labor Organization (ILO) put the number of victims of forced labour, including forced sexual exploitation, at 20.9 million worldwide. As any as 5.5 million of them are children. According to Europol, children forced into criminal activities, such as organized begging and shoplifting, are being traded as commodities with EUR 20,000 price tags.
The estimated number of victims in the developed economies amounts to around 1.5 million forced laborers, seven percent of the total worldwide. Trafficking in human beings generates more than EUR 25 billion profits a year for international criminal organizations worldwide. While many victims come from non-EU countries, internal trafficking (i.e. EU citizens trafficked within the EU) appears to be on the rise.
Preliminary data collected by Member-States at EU level appear consistent with those provided by international organizations, showing that three quarters of victims identified in EU Member-States are trafficked for sexual exploitation.
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