The seven priorities, 2026–2029

The most dangerous criminal networks

What it means

Instead of targeting a type of crime, this priority targets the organisations themselves — and the individuals who make them work. The focus is on the networks that do the most damage: those that corrupt officials, launder money through hidden financial systems, hide behind legitimate companies, recruit teenagers, and use violence to get their way. It also covers the specialists who sell their services to anyone: the money launderers, the document forgers, the fixers.

Why it matters

Take out a shipment and the network replaces it in a week. Take out the network’s leadership, money and infrastructure and it does not come back. This priority also drives the work of finding and confiscating criminal profits — because a criminal organisation without money stops being an organisation.

The fastest-growing online crimes

What it means

Three distinct threats, grouped because they share the same engine — the internet.

• Cyber-attacks against hospitals, governments, companies and individuals: ransomware, data theft, attacks on critical infrastructure.
• Online child sexual exploitation: the production and spread of abuse material, and adults approaching children online.
• Online fraud: large-scale scams targeting the public, businesses and public bodies — investment fraud, fake shops, romance scams, business email compromise.

Why it matters

These are the crimes growing fastest, and the ones most likely to reach an ordinary person directly. They also scale in a way traditional crime cannot: one network can defraud victims in twenty countries from a single room.

Drug trafficking

What it means

Two plans. One targets the trafficking of cannabis, cocaine and heroin into and across Europe, and the networks that grow and distribute them. The other targets synthetic drugs and new psychoactive substances — the laboratories, the chemicals used to make them, and the global supply chains that move them.

Why it matters

Drugs remain the single largest source of income for organised crime in Europe. That money finances everything else — the weapons, the corruption, the violence in European port cities. Attacking the drug economy weakens every other criminal market at the same time.

Migrant smuggling and human trafficking

What it means

Two related but different crimes. Migrant smuggling is the business of moving people illegally across borders — including the networks whose methods put lives at risk, and the trade in forged and fraudulently obtained documents. Human trafficking is the exploitation of people themselves: forced labour, sexual exploitation, forced criminality, with particular attention to the exploitation of children and to victims recruited and advertised online.

Why it matters

These are the priorities where the victims are people rather than markets. EMPACT operations in this area do not only arrest traffickers — they identify and safeguard victims. In the last cycle, 25.000 victims across all priorities were identified or brought to safety.

Firearms and explosives

What it means

The illegal manufacture, trafficking, modification and possession of firearms and other small arms — including converting legal weapons into lethal ones and erasing serial numbers. It covers explosives and pyrotechnics as well.

Why it matters

Every weapon that reaches a criminal network stays in circulation for years. This is the priority that sits underneath the violence in Europe’s cities: fewer guns in circulation means fewer shootings, whatever the underlying crime.

Environmental crime

What it means

Crime against the environment in all its forms, with a particular focus on waste trafficking — illegally dumping or exporting hazardous waste instead of treating it. It also targets criminals who infiltrate or create legitimate-looking companies to run these operations.

Why it matters

Environmental crime is among the most profitable and least punished forms of organised crime. The damage is permanent, it falls on public health and public budgets, and it is usually inflicted on the communities least able to resist it. In the last cycle, EMPACT operations resulted in the seizure of 350.000 tonnes of hazardous and other waste.

Economic and financial crime

What it means

Three plans covering the crimes that steal directly from public finances and consumers.

• VAT fraud, including complex cross-border carousel schemes that exploit the way EU trade is taxed.
• Excise and customs fraud, with a focus on illicit tobacco and on customs fraud including sanctions evasion.
• Intellectual property crime and counterfeiting — fake goods and fake currency, especially products that endanger people’s health and safety.

Why it matters

This is money taken directly out of national budgets and out of consumers’ pockets — and counterfeit medicines, car parts and electrical goods kill people. In the last cycle EMPACT operations seized counterfeit currency with a face value of €1.3 billion.