Meeting in Nicosia on Friday 23 January for an ‘informal’ meeting organised under the Cyprus Presidency, European justice ministers reiterated the urgent need to make progress in recovering criminal assets in order to respond to the scale of illicit financial flows and the changing methods of concealment used by criminal networks.
Following the discussions, Cypriot Minister of Justice and Public Order Costas Fitris spoke about the importance of coordinated action at national, European and cross-border level.
“As long as illegal assets remain in the hands of criminal organisations, they fuel the expansion of their activities”, he said at the final press conference.
According to the European ministers, depriving criminal networks of their financial resources is one of the main ways of fighting organised crime.
Discussions focused on ways to improve authorities’ ability to identify, trace and confiscate the proceeds of crime.
The European ministers agreed on the need to make better use of existing legal frameworks, both at national and European Union level, and to improve their implementation.
With this in mind, the 2024 directive on asset recovery and confiscation (https://aeur.eu/f/kea ), which allows unexplained wealth to be seized, has been identified as a key tool.
The ministers expressed unanimous support for its rapid and ambitious application, believing that it could help close the persistent gap between profits generated by organised crime and the amounts actually recovered by public authorities.
The discussions also reflected Member States’ support for public-private partnerships to detect suspicious financial flows and improve asset recovery. The ministers reiterated that this cooperation must take place within a clear framework that guarantees respect for fundamental rights, in particular the protection of personal data, as well as the principles of the Rule of law.
According to a Cyprus Presidency working paper consulted by Agence Europe, the annual income from organised crime in the European Union is estimated to be at least €139 billion, while the confiscation rate for criminal proceeds remains below 2%.
The document also stresses that “tracking financial flows” is one of the most effective tools for dismantling criminal networks, but that authorities are still faced with obstacles related to the cross-border nature of operations and the speed of capital movements.
The ministers therefore called for efforts to improve information sharing between competent authorities and greater cooperation at European level in order to “stay ahead” of criminal organisations and permanently cut off their sources of funding. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)