Two recent EU publications underscore the central role of corruption and money laundering in enabling organised crime and threatening security – and how essential it is to invest more in efforts to investigate, seize and confiscate criminal assets.
Europol’s 2025 Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) painted a sobering picture of how organised crime is “evolving at an unprecedented pace”, with corruption and money laundering as key enablers.
Given the increasing headwinds against global anti-corruption efforts blowing out of the United States in recent weeks, the EU’s commencement of trilogue negotiations regarding its proposed Directive on combating corruption has gone largely unnoticed.
The European Union’s 2024 Directive on Asset Recovery and Confiscation obliges Member States to, among other things, introduce legislative measures to enable the confiscation of “unexplained wealth”.
This policy paper examines Article 16, which contains this obligation, and the powers and restrictions that Member States will need to include in such “unexplained wealth” measures to ensure compliance with the Directive.
A recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) addresses two significant weaknesses in the effectiveness of EU sanctions enforcement.
First, it makes it clear that an EU-wide ban on “brokering services” for military goods to or from Russia applies even when these goods do not physically enter EU territory.