Reframing European Common Operational Partnerships against THB and Migrant Smuggling

European Common Operational Partnerships (COPs) are collaborative law enforcement initiatives designed to disrupt transnational organized crime, particularly migrant smuggling and human trafficking. While these partnerships are centred on cooperation among public authorities, the European Union has, in some cases, acknowledged the importance of involving private-sector actors in related initiatives. In particular, the participation of non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and other non-profit entities has been recognized as adding significant operational value. This article argues that the current predominant model of COPs, which remains largely focused on public institutional participation, should be reconsidered and reshaped to become more inclusive to address the evolving operational realities of contemporary criminal organizations, whose activities often transcend the capacities and competences of state actors alone.

COPs against migrant smuggling and trafficking in human beings (THB) have generated significant value in terms of liaison, capacity building, training, and, where possible, cross-border information exchange. Nevertheless, the current model remains structurally incomplete insofar as it continues to reproduce a predominantly police-to-police information-sharing architecture. In the field of THB, the earliest indicators of exploitation are often identified not by national criminal police forces, but by a broader range of actors, including victim-support organisations, shelters, labour-rights services, trade unions, local authorities, municipal police bodies, ports and reception services, rescue operators, legal-aid providers, cultural mediators, internet service providers, platform operators, financial institutions, forensic experts, AI and OSINT specialists, and investigative civil society organisations with a special focus on local communities in border areas.

The new proposed model should include a formally governed public-private pre-investigative layer. The model is inspired by Financial Intelligence Unit and anti-money laundering (FIU/AML) cooperation but translated into a victim-centred THB context. Private and civil-society actors should not be deputised as police and should not conduct covert criminal investigations. They can, however, lawfully generate structured risk indicators, red-flag reports, typologies, OSINT preservation packages, victim-sensitive documentation and referral inputs before the opening of a criminal file. Public authorities retain exclusive responsibility for validation, prioritisation, criminal investigation, coercive measures, evidence and prosecution. The missing bridge is a disciplined system of THB indicators: a common language for translating weak signals into reviewable, minimised and auditable pre-investigative inputs.