 Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me today. Thank you for coming and of course Thank you to the Institute and to Nora owner by herself and I'm very happy to hear because I think this is an issue that we need to treat with urgency and Why the urgency when we talk about urgency people will immediately think about the humanitarian crisis. I think it's urgent to talk about it because The way I understand my job, I am working against the buying and selling of people and their services in Europe today This is what trafficking is. It's about buying and selling people and their services so Every time I go to one of our member states to meet with the authorities to meet with the NGOs I also try and go and meet people at shelters. I Very recently met a 19 year old woman from one From a member state who told me her story and her story was that she was Approached by a close friend who was already in another member state saying oh, there's a lot of opportunity here You can get a job you make it benefits and it's great and you should apply For a job as a waitress, etc. And I have friends who can facilitate your coming to the country and so on so she did that and the minute she entered the country she was snatched by that friend and two other two men and She was locked in a in an apartment for a period of ten months in those ten months first She was forced to marry a third-country national and then go and and then Make sure that the guy receives the benefits and the residents pyramid, etc. Etc. And also conveniently she was forced to provide sexual services for the friends of the of the guy Sometimes ten fifteen guys every day and this went on for ten months She didn't step out of the apartment in those ten months at all and She is one of the very lucky cases where a neighbor kind of understood there's something going on and Alerted the police the police did their job. They were very good So she was identified as a victim of trafficking She chose to go back to her country both countries within the EU and She was again very lucky because there was a shelter that was able to take her there for a period of six months This doesn't happen very often Because she comes from quite a big member state they have a regional approach to health service and She had no she had no access to health care services forgot to tell you that she had Cancer and she also had a heart disease at the age of 19 She couldn't go back to her village because her family was under threat by the traffickers because obviously she cooperated with the authorities And I know that that woman is no longer in the shelter. I don't know where she is. I don't know if she's still alive And and what I do know is that there's many forms of exploitation Involved involved in that she was trafficked for the purpose of child marriage She was trafficked initially for the purpose of labor exploitation. She ended up being trafficked for sexual exploitation She was bought and she was sold and her body was used repeatedly And we know for a fact that there's tens of thousands of people in Europe predominantly women but also many men who are trafficked for different forms of exploitation and What we estimate not what many international bodies estimate is that there's hundreds of thousands of people in this situation so And to be honest, I don't know if it really matters it matters for policy, of course But when I think of people when I think of that woman and if somebody tells me well, you're working so that nobody Is this this experience is not repeated again. That's that's good enough But the fact that we possibly have hundreds of thousands of people in Europe today is horrifying So when I was talking to her, of course, and I'll come back to to this later I did say, you know, it's great that the police was able to help you and you're in the shelter I was trying to do the the stereotypical thing of trying to to tell her You know, you have your life ahead of you and she said to me you come too late So So this is why it's urgent because there's lots of people in this situation But it's also very urgent because with this humanitarian with this refugee crisis I think we can only expect that there's gonna be a lot more vulnerable people to be exposed to these networks of traffickers and become victims of different forms and And it is also very sad that people are being trafficked into as well as within the EU So I don't want to conflate my visit here with the situation The the migratory a crisis that we're faced with even though they are very linked and I'll come to that But it's more than that in a sense I am talking about EU citizens being trafficked by other EU citizens and Exploited by other EU citizens as well They're exploited sexually to supply unpaid or very low paid work or services without receiving any rewards They are forced to beg in the streets forced to commit various forms of crime Sometimes they are bought and sold for their own organs and I've met a person in a shelter Who was forced to sell his to sell no to give his a kidney and Then he had no aftercare at all of course And he had a one a year old child and a wife and they were made homeless He had no access to antibiotics for example And this is and this is why it is urgent in my opinion And let me tell you a little bit about what we do first first of all We are faced with a severe and extremely profitable form of crime a severe threat to security a transnational phenomenon often not always and That has implications that individual countries cannot really address on their own But in my opinion, we are mostly in faced with a violation of human rights That is expressively prohibited in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. In fact As far as I understand, it's the only form of organized crime that is explicitly referred to in the Charter In a sense is unique in that way Often I go to rooms and I talk about organized criminality and then there's other rooms where I talk about human rights violations against these people and Rarely do these worlds meet increasingly they do now and that's good And these worlds should meet because it is both things happening at the same time And of course is not new to say I think everybody knows that we need a comprehensive approach to deal with this at the local at the national at the EU level at the international level and I Don't want to speak like a Eurocrata yet But I think I think there's people representing a non-governmental bodies here And I hope they will agree with me that the legal framework at the EU level Relating to trafficking and the policy framework are actually very ambitious very innovative some people says the best legal framework we have in the world at the moment and Why is that because it doesn't only concentrate on the prosecution of the crime and the criminals But also on the protection of the victims and on preventing the crime from happening in the first place It puts human rights at the center It puts victims at the center is gender specific and is child sensitive and really is not poetry It is what this directive does is this legislation does and the European Parliament agrees with that International organizations agree with that and the civil society and it is less let us not forget something that the member states have put together So we have instruments we have the strong Legislation and we have a strong policy framework. I think was mentioned before They use strategy towards the eradication of trafficking that actually ends at the end of this year It was a five-year program that I was responsible to monitor But we also have this trafficking addressed in various policy documents of the Commission just recent ones We have the European agenda on migration for obvious reasons that should be there the European agenda on security Obviously address there the action plan against migrant smuggling the action plan on human rights and democracy The new framework on the EU activities on gender equality and women's empowerment in external relations I can go on but this is just to say that there's different that is such a Complex phenomenon that we need to address it in a complex way and from different using different policy frameworks So the directive is quite new is quite young in a sense. It's let's not forget that it sets minimum standards That we must uphold The deadline for the transposition for the translation of the of the law international law was already in April 2013 26 out of 27 member states bound by the directive Denmark is not bound Have notified the commission of full transposition and now we are studying what the member states have notified We will issue a report at the end of the year Germany is the only country that has a notified transposition of the legislation But of course, it's very easy to talk about transposition and we have excellent lawyers and a lot of goodwill And I'm sure that that eventually everything will be in place But the point is to make full and correct implementation of the directive And this is where the real challenge will come and the real challenge in also in terms of monitoring In terms of the legal the policy framework, as I said, we have this strategy we have a lot of concrete actions that that join many commission services together varying from areas of employment to development cooperation To humanitarian assistance, of course to justice home affairs and so on our member states are engaged in this civil society is also engaged in the priorities vary from identifying protecting and assisting victims preventing the crime the phenomenon prosecuting traffickers Enhanced coordination and policy coherence So I'm not here to list all the things we have done We have a website actually one of the only thematic websites in the commission So precisely we understand that trafficking is not something to be dealt with from a home affairs point of view alone But it's something that is very horizontal in the services So we have a thematic website where you can find information on everything that we have been doing And we also what I like to say is that it's Increasingly extremely important that we marry this policy framework With our funding priorities because sometimes and it's a challenge to do at the member state level It's a challenge to do at the EU level of course Especially when so many services a fund projects and programs on trafficking so When when we started putting together this at the current strategy I was thinking well if there's so many services engaged in funding projects on human trafficking How how do what do we know what what what have we achieved? Where are we at? So what we are doing at the moment is a comprehensive policy review So we have managed to collect every single project funded by the European Commission since 2003 From 11 different services of the Commission everything is on the website in terms of projects And now we have a huge study trying to assess So how was this money allocated in terms of Geographical areas in terms of fields actors engage types of projects and so on and the most important thing is What do they say? How do we move on? So at the end of the year, I'll speak about this a little bit later We will have a new policy framework a post 2016 agenda and 16 agenda on trafficking And I think this policy review will really help us Make sure that not only we prioritize correctly But that we ensure that taxpayers money are not Used to duplicate and triplicate activities sometimes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm working on this and I'm working on this And when you think about it From a taxpayers point of view you have a project something maybe Ireland. I don't know gives development funding in ex-country and then an international organization gives money to that ex-country and Then the European Commission gives money to that ex-country and the European Commission gives money to an NGO working on that ex-country So unless we know how this money is used and allocated Properly, and I'm not saying we're gonna get to the you know We're gonna understand everything and get a crystal clear picture, but unless we understand at least where we are We cannot really be in a place to start a new policy framework And that's why we're trying to finish this this study at the moment We also just published the Some analysis that we've done on the gender dimension of trafficking It's a very obviously trafficking is a highly gendered phenomenon I'll say a little bit about statistics later But the directive itself talks about the obligation of the member states to take a gender-specific approach And here I want to say something let us before we say oh gender sexual exploitation Let's see gender is both men and women obviously and Women are highly concentrated with when it comes to trafficking for sexual exploitation But then also when it comes to trafficking for the purpose of child marriages I gave you an example before Also when it comes to domestic servitude Then we have a lot of men who are trafficked for the purpose of labor exploitation Do we have shelters for them? Do we have provisions on how best to identify them? Etc. Etc. Well, the European Commission is clear that trafficking in women and girls is a structural form of violence I Want I won't go more into that But I want to focus on what I came here to talk about which is the issue of buying and selling people So I think we have become very very good As member states as the Commission as NGOs Are repeating that poverty lack of democratic cultures a very long list gender inequality violence against women conflict lack of opportunities? I'm sure I'm missing many is what causes trafficking and Is convenient and I had I had an MEP a member of the European Parliament Three or four years ago I was saying we have to eradicate trafficking and she said to me first you have to eradicate poverty and In the beginning I was thinking oh god, she's right and then I thought actually that's very convenient Ah, isn't that very convenient? So we let's just concentrate on only on poverty And I think is in a sense Let's divert a little bit from that and take a more immediate approach to what is organized crime and a human rights violation Um, of course all all the factors have listed our pull factors that make people a lot more vulnerable to becoming Traffic, so I'm not gonna come here and tell you yes. We're all vulnerable in this room to becoming traffic. This is clear But not all poor people in the world are trafficked And not all people who don't live in democratic cultures are trafficked etc etc so While we address all these global issues, we must understand that trafficking happens because it is Incredibly profitable We are talking about a serious form of organized crime I joined the Commission from a very Human rights background and I've become the most converted person that unless we understand the huge Profits stemming from this horrifying form of crime. We won't get anywhere. It is extremely profitable And also There's demand for the people and their services often very cheap that they provide So trafficking doesn't happen because there are victims or because I don't live in a democratic culture and so on Actually, if you look at the the maps of the roots of traffickers where the victims originate from and where they end up Where they end up you'll find that often they end up in prosperous countries and They're exploited by more prosperous people Who become more prosperous if they profit from the exploitation? So let us not put more responsibility on that poor girl who was looking for employment and saying is her poverty that did that no It was the guy who forced her to marry her that did that and he was the client that did that And he was those who profited from the situation that did that So if we want to talk profits There's different estimates, but in Europe alone It is understood that only for sexual exploitation the profits are over 3 billion euro annually We all think that this is very conservative the international labor organization talks more broadly about forced labor Estimates a hundred and fifty billion dollars annually for the traffickers for the for the for the exploiters so Trafficking brings money for the traffickers hundred and fifty billion. I don't know in the European area. They say about fifty billion But then there's money for illegal sectors and then there's money for legal sectors engaged in illegal business That girl that young woman I met was on a bus From one country to the other the guy had a driving license and a bus service and he was all nice and legal And I'm sure he was perfectly aware who he was carrying and where and she wasn't alone That for me is money in legal sectors engaged in illegal business And then there's money for legal sectors engaged in legal business whether we want to talk about Labor exploitation whether we want to talk about sexual exploitation and about a hotel and people coming in and out There's so many different examples And of course we can discuss the the criminal aspect of that But what I don't understand and I spent five years working on this and I still don't understand is Who profits from the exploitation of others and I don't understand because they're not exposed Because we don't have a lot of prosecutions based on that So who made money out of the exploitation the buying and selling of others Who saves from the exploitation? You know how much you can save from keeping a slave at home I don't know how much your cleaning costs or baby care and so on but you can save money Who benefits from cheap products and services with eyes wide shut? And what are we doing to ensure that we sufficiently target the criminals the users the profit makers the exploiters? For me if we are going to address Trafficking seriously we have to follow the money and we must look into the huge financial interest that triggers such a crime Huge financial interest. I don't know how many times I can say that is billion It's billions in profits And we must attack those profits and one of the many tools we have available of course is proactive financial Investigations that they should play a very key role in Alternative and as an as an effective tool to gathering evidence in trafficking cases So that's one side of it the money side of it and the other side that is very linked It's also the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation So in the same way I can ask the same as can ask the question who buys the services of victims of trafficking Who buys boys and girls? who buys Weirdly cheap products Who keeps slaves in their house again? We don't know because again these people are not prosecuted and How do the profits that I talked about before if I'm thinking of them the micro economic model Further fuel the demand create the demand the supply. There is the demand all this Continuum endless continuum of exploitation. So who who how do these profits? fuel the these use of the services of the victims and I think this these are the main questions We need to ask to address the phenomenon in an effective way and this is not just what I think because one day I I decided but the EU law has decided for us In fact article 18 of the legislation says that member states have a legal obligation To discourage and reduce the demand for all forms of exploitation and to raise awareness. This is a legal obligation Some member states will say I have posters on toilet doors. I don't know is that addressing the demand for all forms of exploitation and It obliges member states to take appropriate action to inform around the issue But also to reduce the risk of people becoming victims And the directive has another very tricky Paragraph that talks about member states at the very least consider Making it a crime to use the services of victims of trafficking when we know that the person is a victim Let me come back to this buying and selling thing that I I keep repeating In some member states today is not illegal to buy and use the services of victims of trafficking Even when you know that the victim that the person is a victim So we can buy goods that we know have been produced by victims of trafficking But we would not necessarily be punished for it We can buy sexual services from people that have been trafficked and we know But we would not be punished for engaging in a crime Because the last time we checked human trafficking is a crime is in the treaty. It's a famous euro crime one of eight. I think so There is this is where the important question of individuals clients consumers responsibilities, but also the responsibilities of businesses come in Because to repeat what the young woman said to me for the victim is too late For the other 14 year old that I met who has a two-year-old daughter as a result of Multiple rapes and and I met both the little girls the 14 year old and the two year old She said to me I said to her what do you want to do with your life? And she said to me what life I'm dead So this is what she said. So of course is incredibly important to have services for these people and maybe she stands a chance but an Nigerian woman I met a lot older In some other member states said to me When I asked her so what do you want to do? She said I've been raped so many times. You're a woman You should know there's no place for me anymore. There's nowhere to go So I'm not saying that because we shouldn't concentrate on victims. We should focus on victims This is clear, but not without thinking about preventing the phenomenon at the same time So the question that I ask a lot of prosecutors and sometimes people sneer, but really it's a it's a real question Do we have another area of crime? Where those who knowingly participating the crime in the exploitation are not criminalized? You know, I like designer bags I guess so you go down the street and you can get one for ten euro But you have to kind of look around a little bit because if someone watching you know You know you're doing something wrong, but if you're buying a person, you're not criminalized So and then if we don't criminalize the offense the crime What's the alternative impunity for the crime because we can say oh, it's very difficult to criminalize Yeah, I mean it's very criminal and difficult to find the murderer and so on so let's just drop it You know, is that what we do is this how we work in the justice system So we must not forget at any point that the law has many functions and its normative effect is not to be dismissed So these are very important issues that we're considering and I keep repeating this because at the end of this year We will produce a report assessing the legal measures that some member states because not all of them have chosen to do this Have taken to criminalize the use of services of victims of trafficking and then of course if necessary come up with proposals What is interesting is that we have another piece of the law the employer's sanctions directive is from 2009 and what that law does is to provide for criminal sanctions for the employers of illegally staying third country nationals who use work of services Extracted from the persons when they know they're victims very long sentence to say that if employers are using knowingly using victims of trafficking who are third country nationals they're criminalized But if there are you nationals not necessarily criminalized and not all not for not for all forms of exploitation So it's time to consider how we consolidate the legal framework What we do know as I said before for the period of 2010 to 2012 The registered victims some people will say is the tip of the iceberg other will say is represent some kind of a reality But certainly they're not all the victims 30,146 women men girls and boys Registered victim of trafficking in the EU member states. This is what was provided by the member states So it's not a lot of estimates and say sensationalism It's 30,146 people in the situation of that girl. I described before and this The number is really a lot higher. We know that 80% of the victims are female in this in the statistics and 70% of the traffickers are male 16% were children girls and boys The most widespread form consistently sexual exploitation with 69% and the vast vast majority of those are women and girls Another thing that I think might be interesting in terms of numbers is that 65% of the victims this is consistent with Europol's report of two months ago are 65% of the victims are EU nationals. I Think that's fundamental Because it's important not to take things out of context sometimes We're here to talk about a form of organized crime that is a huge and severe violation of human rights That happens to EU citizens and non EU citizens But in the EU the exploiters are predominantly EU citizens And there are many challenges of course in the data collection and in the registration of victims that top five countries From within the EU are Bulgaria Romania the Netherlands Hungary and Poland where victims come from in the in the EU from outside the EU We had Nigeria Turkey the Ukraine Vietnam and others. I do understand We all understand that we read the data with a lot of caution It is the best is the most comprehensive regional set of statistics. We have available. Is it good enough? No, does it need to improve? Certainly, but it's a good exercise that we embarked on the second one was much better than the first and now We're about to start the third collection of exercise And I think the member states and ourselves are learning a lot from this process Another thing is on on victims as rights holders Sometimes we we we think that is politically correct to say that they're trafficked persons Hello, I'm a trafficked person. That's very nice And we don't like to call them victims because he strips them of their agency. No He strips them of their rights as victims of trafficking Victims of trafficking at the EU level have a vast area of rights as they should So they are women men girls boys who have agency who have choices who make options like that girl who wanted to go that Young woman who wanted to go to the other country to work of course but She was a victim of trafficking and that we need to remember because conveniently When when you talk about a trafficked person There's no victim. There's no victim. There's no perpetrator. If there's no perpetrator There's nobody to criminalize. We can all go home and talk about poverty So I think it's quite important to insist on this and to insist on addressing all forms of exploitation And I have never been to any any discussion where people say Should we do more on labor exploitation or sexual exploitation? This is on the rise. What is this an auction house? Are we competing for forms of exploitation or are we trying to help all victims? We should be concentrating on all forms of exploitation as this relates to trafficking and Especially to children who are of course the most vulnerable That is uncontested. We have done a lot of work on children again. It's not to list here One of the main actions of course to be taken at the national level is proper child protection Systems that need to be strong. They need to take care of child victims irrespective of status Talking of status a few words on trafficking and smuggling in some media circles in most media circles Conflated confused used interchangeably Yes, they're all victims of trafficking. Yes, they're all smuggled. They're all this and that I think it's important to Clarify and not to use interchangeably although sometimes very very linked They are two very very distinct phenomena legally speaking But they're also is important is important to have clarity politically legally and operationally What we we can all agree on is that both smuggling and trafficking are very very profitable forms of crime The criminal networks profit tremendously But I think there are serious implications predominantly for the victims But also for states if we don't for not clear about the differences sometimes trafficked persons are smuggled through borders and Often or sometimes they might end up being trafficked, but this is not always the case This is not the case and there are many different reasons why this is not the case The first one at the differentiated factors if you like is consent We can spend a whole workshop discussing consent But in reality the difference is that a smuggled person in legal terms have Consented and paid to be smuggled even though they may be taking a life-threatening risk Trafficking victims have either never consented or if they did initially the consent was rendered Irrelevant by by the abusive actions, of course of the traffickers When it comes to children, there's no discussion here when we talk about trafficking people do not have to be To cross a border to be trafficked. You can be trafficked in your own little village Where smuggling has a clear? transnational phenomenon crossing a border and Then the state responsibility when a person is smuggled from one country to another This is a crime against the state in legal terms. I'm not here. I'm not discussing ideological Ideological issues here. I'm telling you that legally they're two different things Trafficking is a crime against the individual Smuggling is he is illegal movement of people in exchange for payment, but no exploitative and purpose Although the smuggled person may end up of course being exploited Whereas when it comes to trafficking is a completely different story and clearly, but at the same time There's very strong links think about asylum procedures for example Sometimes they can be misused by traffickers with serious consequences for the victims Sometimes we hear for example, I don't know if you've read in the press But certainly Europe or Europe reports are clear from frantic from the international Organizational migration. We have a lot of Nigerian girls that are trafficked into the EU using the migratory routes. I Think all of us in the room would identify those as victims of trafficking. It would take about five minutes I don't think this is a hidden form of crime always So you have these eight these nine-year-old in the metropolitan city somewhere in Europe And it's clear I think to all of us whether that person is smuggled or trafficked and for what purpose And I think we need to just start recognizing these things a little bit more The external dimension of trafficking is of course a fundamental element of the work that we do The EU is a global actor and a major donor of aid of course globally. We have funded a lot of projects. I Want getting a bit aware of the time. Yes, so I won't say a lot about what we do But I'm happy to answer questions On on the external dimension, but we do a lot on that. I Just want to say something on conceptual clarity Conceptual clarity is not just when it comes to smuggling and trafficking because that's a very easy thing to to explain in some ways But also when it comes to example, for example trafficking and modern slavery Sometimes this is used interchangeably And I'd like to draw caution According to international law slavery and trafficking in human beings are two distinct legal phenomenon Not all victims of trafficking are necessarily slaves and the other way around and The characteristics of slavery do not at all times reflect the experiences of trafficked people The EU law refers to slavery in the context of the exploitation and stipulates that slavery is one of the elements relating to trafficking The EU doesn't have competence on on slavery. It has on trafficking I will finish with the fishing industry For a little bit obvious reasons The fishing industry is recognized as a high-risk sector for the purpose of forced labor We have been working a lot in the social dialogue committee for fisheries in the EU I think often like in many other areas. We are aware the business sector is unaware of how their links Unaware of the linkages between trafficking and their work But they should be aware They should be looking for this a little bit more the private sector should be a little bit more responsible in their last applied chains And we should think a little bit when we they're prawns And we should if for no other reason because article five of the legislation for the first time holds legal entities accountable We are very happy to see that the Irish government Established an inter departmental task force to examine a wide range of issues identified in this case of the treatment of workers on on board in the Irish fishing This is of course very good And on a grid new system for migrant workers looks promising of course and the EU is ready to support in in this context I Skipped parts of my presentation. I just want to finish by telling you by telling you that I'm not here to tell you that oh the EU has done the best thing in the world, etc But we do have very good legislation in place that really doesn't need Much in terms of ways forward and we do have a very good policy framework and we have provided funding What we don't see very much is the implementation? It will be very nice for me to have a raison d'etre, you know to remain there for another 30 years We need legislation. We don't really need legislation We need to implement the commitments that we have set out to do What we will do now is next week We are publishing a report the first report the anti-trafficking co-ordinators report on Progress made in relation to trafficking at the EU level. This will hopefully happen next week And I think this is quite an interesting report in terms of developments and trends and We will issue the report on the transposition of the legislation at the end of the year this famous report on the criminalization This policy review so there's there's a lot coming ahead and a new strategy and a new agenda a policy framework And now is the time when everybody rolls their eyes because the the strategy consciously talks about the litigation and Then I say that anything less ambitious is an insult to the victims and it's an insult to all of us because we're gonna tolerate a little bit and I just want to close by reminding you that 20 years ago We used to roll our eyes and I was in rooms where people rolled their eyes when we talked about rape and domestic violence How are you gonna prove and come on and these women they were asking for it I think at least in polite conversation. We stopped doing that and we have legislation that makes sure that we don't do that And I think given the migratory aspect of the crime and the humanitarian crisis I'd like to finish with a quote from a colleague from the member states We've had one of those member state configuration meetings and and and he was saying you know States are strong and they can protect themselves Individuals and especially those exploited are weak and it's our duty as societies to protect them And I think this is what our focus should be. Thank you very much