Organised crime is evolving rapidly. Driven by global instability, digitalisation, and new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), criminal networks are transforming faster than ever before. The EU’s Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (EU-SOCTA 2025) outlines key changes reshaping organised crime in Europe.
Crime as a Destabilising Force
Today, organised crime doesn’t just threaten public safety—it challenges the stability of European institutions and society itself. Internally, criminal networks spread corruption, violence, and exploitation of vulnerable groups. Illicit profits infiltrate legitimate markets, undermining the economy from within.
Externally, criminal groups increasingly partner with hybrid threat actors. These partnerships amplify geopolitical instability and pose direct threats to national security, as criminal operations become proxies for foreign state interests.
Online Platforms: The New Backbone of Crime
Digital platforms have become critical infrastructure for organised crime. Nearly all criminal activities now involve the internet, either as a target, a tool, or a facilitator. Cyber fraud, ransomware, drug trafficking, and money laundering flourish online.
Criminals exploit digital platforms for anonymity, making detection more difficult. Data, considered the currency of power, is regularly stolen, traded, and weaponised by criminal networks, enhancing their reach and influence.
AI and Emerging Tech: Accelerating Crime
AI and emerging technologies amplify criminal efficiency and scalability. Criminal networks rapidly adopt AI-driven tools, leveraging them to automate crimes, enhance sophistication, and evade law enforcement detection.
The same qualities making AI revolutionary—such as adaptability and accessibility—also enable criminals to carry out more efficient and harder-to-trace operations. AI-driven crime includes automated social engineering, cyber-attacks, and even the generation of harmful content like child sexual abuse material.
Seven Key Threats Identified by EU-SOCTA 2025
EU-SOCTA 2025 highlights seven main threats where criminal networks are expanding significantly:
- Cyber-attacks: Ransomware and critical infrastructure attacks are increasingly aligned with state-sponsored objectives.
- Online Fraud: Driven by AI-powered scams exploiting stolen personal data.
- Child Sexual Exploitation: Facilitated and escalated by generative AI tools.
- Migrant Smuggling: Networks exploit humanitarian crises for profit, disregarding human dignity.
- Drug Trafficking: Evolving distribution methods, intensifying violence, and youth recruitment.
- Firearms Trafficking: Enhanced by online marketplaces, increased weapon availability, and technology.
- Waste Crime: A lucrative but overlooked market, severely harming the environment through exploitation of legitimate businesses.
Cross-Cutting Elements: Reinforcing Criminal Activities
Several cross-cutting elements strengthen and sustain criminal networks:
- Financial Crime and Money Laundering: Criminal profits flow into digital and parallel financial systems, leveraging blockchain technologies to resist law enforcement interventions.
- Corruption: Criminals increasingly target individuals with critical digital access, facilitating infiltration and enabling illicit activities at scale.
- Escalating Violence: Criminal conflicts intensify violence, fueled by encrypted digital communications enabling borderless recruitment and operations.
- Exploitation of Young Offenders: Criminals exploit young individuals, shielding leadership from prosecution and perpetuating the crime cycle.
Breaking the Cycle: Strategic Law Enforcement Responses
Effectively combating these threats requires integrated law enforcement strategies that target not only specific crimes but also the underlying processes enabling them. Authorities must disrupt financial channels, digital infrastructures, and corrupt networks to dismantle the resilience of organised crime.
Only by adapting to this new digital and AI-driven criminal environment can Europe successfully counteract the growing threats outlined in EU-SOCTA 2025.
