Brussels, 10/02/2011 (Agence Europe) - The EU should provide itself with genuine resources for tackling the mafia and other forms of organised crime. This was the message of the S&D Group at the European Parliament at a conference it organised on 8 and 9 February on tackling organised crime in Europe which was attended by many Italians, including anti-mafia public prosecutor Piero Grasso, who spoke of his experience in Italy in confiscating the financial and real estate assets of the mafia and other criminal organisations.
The EU is in the process of preparing legislation in this connection but on 20 January, the member states asked the Commission to speed up the process and unveil the draft legislation earlier than planned. At the moment, the EU is badly equipped for dealing with organised crime and there is genuine lack of harmonisation among the 27 member states, Piero Grasso said, calling for greater homogeneity of laws and increased international judicial cooperation on money-laundering techniques used by criminals. This is one of the EU's weak points, said Grasso, recommending the introduction of a new crime of belonging to a criminal organisation in addition to existing laws.
The EU is also suffering because it is much easier for goods and individuals to circulate than judges and the police, said Italian public prosecutor Giancarlo Caselli. This problem was also raised by the director of Eurojust, Aled Williams, pointing out that Eurojust is not yet able to undertake its own operations and highlighting shortcomings, for example with the European arrest warrant. He said that too many European arrest warrants had been issued for trivial matters, which had stopped Eurojust from focusing on organised crime.
Inter-institutional cooperation is often very time-consuming, protracted, cumbersome and bureaucratic, commented Spanish public prosecutor José Ramon Norena Salto. The EU is not properly armed against the globalisation of crime that now organises itself internationally to launder money and share out markets and areas of influence, explained Piero Grasso, adding that organised crime is reputed to generate around US$128 billion a year ($105 billion of it in illegal drugs alone). Criminal organisations are stretching their tentacles into legal activity and Grasso said that this was an area where EU countries that allow banking secrecy had a real problem. (S.P./transl.fl)