This section examinestransnational organized crime in the European context. There are two sides tothis issue. First of all, transnational organized crime is an internal problemin the form of cross-border crime connecting countries within Europe. At thesame time, it is a facet of the global landscape of cross-border crime. Bothaspects will be considered here.

However, before delving into adiscussion of the underlying phenomena, it is necessary to first establish aconceptual framework that is more meaningful and more concise than the conceptof “transnational organized crime,” which adds the notion of transnationalityto the fuzzy and ambiguous concept of “organized crime”.

The concept of organized crimecan be broken down into three basic dimensions: criminal activities, offenderstructures, and illegal governance. According to one view, organized crime isabout crime that is organized in contrast to spontaneous, irrational criminalbehavior. According to another view, organized crime is about organizations ofcriminals labeled, for example, “networks,” “cartels,” or “mafias.” A thirdview, finally, holds that organized crime is about the exercise of power bycriminals in those areas that the government is unwilling or unable toregulate—for example, illegal markets or remote parts of a country.

Along these lines, transnational organized crime can be conceptualized in terms of three maincategories: (1) illegal activities that somehow transcend internationalborders; (2) transnationally mobile criminal organizations—respectively,criminal organizations with a presence in more than one country; and (3) theextension of illegal governance across international borders.

Although empirically these three categories may overlap, in theinterest of clarity it appears preferable to examine each category separatelywith regard to the situation in Europe.

Global Crimes

Transnational criminalactivities—namely, the smuggling of illegal goods—connect Europe with otherparts of the world, and different countries within Europe. When one looks atthe trafficking routes that span the globe, Europe can be found at either end:It is a destination for as well as a source of contraband that is being movedbetween continents. Most commonly, however, Europe is seen as a major consumermarket.

This applies in particular toillegal drugs—namely, cocaine originating in South America and heroinoriginating in Central Asia. According to the UN World Drug Report, Europe isthe world's second largest consumer market for cocaine and the main consumermarket for heroin.

Both cocaine and heroin arrivein Europe as finished products. From what is known, there are no laboratorieswithin Europe that manufacture heroin and few if any laboratories thatmanufacture cocaine from raw materials or intermediate products. What have beenfound in Spain and Greece are installations for repackaging heroin and for thesecondary extraction of smuggled cocaine from substances used to preventdetection during overseas transport. A somewhat different picture presentsitself with regard to cannabis. Although Europe is an important market forcannabis from Africa, in particular Morocco, it appears that European consumersare increasingly supplied with cannabis produced in indoor plantations withinEurope. Interestingly, indoor cannabis plantations in a number of Europeancountries—namely, the United Kingdom, have been prominently linked toVietnamese immigrants. In the case of synthetic drugs, likewise, the Europeanmarket is primarily supplied by producers within Europe. At the same time,Europe is the world's main producer of amphetamine and it has in the past alsobeen an important source for ecstasy marketed overseas. However, as a result ofsuccessful law enforcement intervention, Europe's role as a supplier of ecstasyhas declined sharply in recent years.

Besides illegal drugs, Europeis an important destination for other illegal goods such as protected culturalartifacts, protected wildlife, and counterfeit brand products, includingmedicine, software and cigarettes. Human trafficking for sexual exploitationand labor exploitation, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, appears to havebeen primarily a phenomenon within Europe. But there are also traffickingroutes into Europe—for example, from China and Nigeria. However, the mainillegal movement of people into Europe involves alien smuggling rather thanhuman trafficking. All European countries are believed to be affected to somedegree by illegal migration, facilitated in part by commercially operatingalien smugglers. There are also illegal cross-border movements in the oppositedirection, out of Europe to other parts of the world. Europe's role as anexporter of ecstasy and amphetamine has already been noted. Two other areas oftransnational crime are also noteworthy: the trafficking in stolen motorvehicles and the trafficking in illegal waste. Main trafficking routes forstolen cars extend from Western Europe to Asia and to Africa. Likewise, in thecase of illegal waste disposal—namely, second-hand electric and electronicequipment—main target countries are located in Asia and Africa. Europe is animportant global center for the theft and sale of credit card data andsimilarly valuable information over the Internet. This pertains in particularto the Russian-speaking parts of Eastern Europe. At the same time, EuropeanInternet users are the target of advance fee fraudsters from Africa. In thecase of arms trafficking, smuggling routes lead into and out of Europe, andthey also connect countries within Europe. The global illegal trade in humanorgans is a special case. There is a strong European component here as well,both in terms of organ donors from poor countries such as Moldova and in termsof wealthy Europeans receiving trafficked organs, with the transplantations typically,it seems, taking place outside Europe.

The common pattern these global crime connections follow for themost part, with the notable exception of synthetic drugs, is the transfer ofwealth (e.g., in the case of agricultural drugs from Latin America, Africa, andAsia being sold in Europe) or of costs (e.g., in the case of electronic wastetrafficked from Europe to Africa and Asia) from richer to poorer countries. Asimilar pattern can be observed within Europe.

Transnational Crimes within Europe

Transnational organized crimewithin Europe is mostly framed as an expression of the socioeconomic contrastbetween Western Europe on one hand and the former Soviet Bloc and Balkancountries on the other. There are indeed certain transnational crimes that tosome extent are defined by an East-West axis. For example, the trafficking instolen motor vehicles typically goes from Western Europe to Eastern Europe,similar to other forms of predatory crimes such as cross-border serial burglarywhere Eastern European criminal groups operate in Western Europe. In contrast,the trafficking in women for sexual exploitation and the smuggling ofcigarettes goes primarily in the opposite direction, from Eastern Europe toWestern Europe. There are, however, variations. Human-trafficking routes are inpart determined by geographical proximity—for example, between Scandinavia andthe Baltic states; in part they appear to reflect consumer demands and connectsource countries in Eastern Europe with Western Europe over greater distances.At the same time, trafficking routes also exist between different countries oftransition in Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

In the case of cigarettesmuggling, particular European countries have at different times stood out asmain source and transshipment countries—such as Belgium, Poland, Lithuania,Montenegro, and Ukraine—and main destination countries—such as Italy, Spain,Germany, and the United Kingdom. Other transnational crimes fit even lessreadily into a strict East-West schema. In fact, the European crime landscapecan perhaps best be described as a patchwork where trafficking routes andregional crime hotspots are unevenly distributed across space and time. This isbest documented in the case of illegal drugs. The main point of entry forcocaine and cannabis imports into Europe is the Iberian Peninsula (Spain andPortugal) while heroin enters Europe primarily through the traditional Balkanroute involving countries in South-Eastern Europe, and the Silk route throughRussia. The Netherlands and to a limited extent Belgium likewise serve asimportant points of entry as well as distribution centers within Europe forthese agricultural drugs. The Netherlands and Belgium also figure prominentlyin the production and distribution of synthetic drugs, namely amphetamine andecstasy. The production of methamphetamine, however, is historicallyconcentrated elsewhere in Europe, namely in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Labshave also been found more recently in Lithuania, Germany, and Poland. At thesame time, consumption of methamphetamine is most prevalent in Scandinavia andthe Baltic region, underscoring the patchwork character of transnational crimein Europe.

Other examples for the unevendistribution of crime patterns across Europe include the concentration of theproduction of counterfeit Euros in Bulgaria and Italy and the concentration ofcertain kinds of cybercrime in the Russian-speaking parts of Eastern Europe.

The Organization of Transnational Offenders

When one shifts the focus frompatterns of criminal activities to the organizational structures that connectthe offenders involved in these criminal activities, an even more complexpicture emerges. This is true especially when one departs from superficialaccounts fixated on the ethnic background of offenders. Transnational organizedcrime is often classified along ethnic lines or by the nationality ofoffenders. This makes sense to some extent since in particular areas oftransnational crime there is a disproportionate involvement of offenders ofcertain ethnic or national backgrounds. This may reflect the strategicimportance of certain countries for specific types of transnational crime orparticular trafficking routes, and it may reflect links between former colonialpowers and their colonies or links between source and destination countries ofmigration. For example, offenders with personal links to important productionand transshipment centers such as Colombia, Venezuela, the Antilles, or WestAfrica in the case of cocaine trafficking tend to have a competitive advantageover offenders with no such ties. Migrant communities are also oftenhighlighted as an important support infrastructure for transnational offenders.They constitute “niches of familiarity” and provide some level of protectionfrom law enforcement because of the shielding effects of cultural and languagedifferences. At the same time, ethnicity and nationality are too broad and toosuperficial categories for the conceptualization of transnational criminalstructures. And they are misleading in the sense that they fail to capture theethnic diversity of criminal structures in Europe. A more careful analysisneeds to take other dimensions into account—namely, the form and function ofcriminal structures.