Migrant smuggling claims thousands of lives every year. To fight this deadly crime, the Commission has launched the Global Alliance against Migrant Smuggling. This alliance focuses on prevention, response and alternatives to irregular migration, including addressing the root causes of irregular migration and facilitating legal routes.
The Commission also proposes to update EU rules on preventing and combating migrant smuggling by
– further harmonising rules in EU countries by criminalising the facilitation of unauthorised entry, transit and stay of non-EU citizens and increasing penalties for smugglers
– Strengthening the role of Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, in the fight against migrant smuggling by increasing the financial and human resources at its disposal.
The global crises are pushing the criminal smuggling of migrants into the EU, which uses lies to attract desperate people, to new heights. Criminal organisations using land, sea and air routes typically cram hundreds of people onto small boats when travelling by sea.
As a result, a staggering 28 000 people have drowned or disappeared in the Mediterranean since 2014. The tragic loss of human life must end.
Renewed EU Action Plan against migrant smuggling (2021-2025)
In the new Pact on Migration and Asylum, the renewed EU Action Plan strengthens operational cooperation and information exchange between EU countries and EU law enforcement agencies to detect and prosecute migrant smuggling networks. It covers areas such as financial investigation, asset recovery, document fraud and digital smuggling. The renewed EU Action Plan takes a comprehensive approach and seeks to work even more closely with partner countries along migration routes to the EU.
The renewed EU Action Plan against migrant smuggling includes the following main pillars of action:
– enhanced cooperation with partner countries and international organisations, including through operational partnerships against smuggling of migrants;
– implementing legal frameworks and sanctioning smugglers operating inside and outside the EU;
– preventing exploitation and ensuring the protection of migrants;
– strengthening cooperation and supporting law enforcement and judicial work to respond to new challenges
– increase knowledge of the organisation and modus operandi of traffickers.
The renewed EU Action Plan builds on the successful actions of the 2015-2020 EU Action Plan. These include strengthening Europol’s anti-trafficking capacity through the establishment of a European Migrant Smuggling Centre and enhancing information exchange and operational cooperation on migrant smuggling between EU countries, in particular through the European Multidisciplinary Platform for Cooperation against Criminal Threats (EMPACT).
As regards strengthening cooperation with partner countries, the EU Action Plan supports the development of operational cooperation against migrant smuggling with non-EU countries along the main migration routes to the EU, in the form of bilateral and regional cooperation. In addition, capacity building activities for police and judicial authorities of non-EU countries have been provided through the development of joint operational partnerships.
