30^th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities – 22 to 24 March 2016

Debate on “Fighting human trafficking: the role of local authorities”

Speech by Jelena Drenjanin, EU Committee of the Regions, Rapporteur on the eradication of trafficking human beings

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Esteemed panellists,

Dear friends,

It is a great honour for me to be here today. I would like to thank the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe and the Secretary general Andreas Keifer in particular, for inviting me to represent the European Committee of the Regions at this meeting. The Congress and the CoR have an excellent long-standing cooperation and have worked together to strengthen local democracy, rule of law and to promote the principle of subsidiarity and decentralization as one of the most effective ways to ensure the citizens a concrete say in their country policy making process.

Therefore, the CoR can only be very happy to participate in its launch to talk about the role of local authorities in fighting this gross violation of human rights. I feel shocked to see how the trafficking of human beings has dramatically increased in the last years since my opinion was on the agenda, and has now reached the top of the European agenda following the migrants and refugees crisis.

Let me begin by saying a couple of quick words about the Committee of the Regions. Most of you know that the CoR is an EU advisory body, which important political role is enshrined int the Lisbon Treaty. It and acts as the European Union’s assembly of local and regional representatives. It aims to involve local and regional authorities in the EU decision making process and to ensure a greater participation of all citizens in the European project. The Committee of the Regions votes on political recommendations for European strategies and plays a key role in the preparatory phase of EU legislation. It channels the experience and expertise of the regional and local authorities into EU decision making. The CoR works in close partnership with the three mainEU institutions, notably the European Commission, the Parliament and the Council. With the EC and The Parliant, in particular, the CoR cooperation is driven by very ambitious Cooperation Agreements, on which our assembly is recognized as a key political partner in order to ensure that EU legislation and policies respect the prerogatives of cities and regions and are in line with the principles of subsidiarity and multi-level governance.

 And it is important to state that the CoR and its members are not isolated in the "Euro-bubble". We have good and longstanding relations with civil society and NGOs both back home and in Brussels!

Within the CoR, I am a member of the CIVEX commission, which among others deals with issues falling under the Council's Justice and Home Affairs remits.

According to Europol sources, Human smugglers made a record profit in 2015 of between $3bn and $6bn by exploiting the misery of refugees and migrants. The European Commission's Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs says that the volume of people trying to enter in the EU in the next two years could be of 3 billions. This means European governments must find effective ways out or risk further growth of this inhuman industry.

But this is not only the business of national authorities.

Two years ago, when the European Commission published the EU strategy towards the eradication of trafficking in human beings, we saw that this is a topic of high concern to many cities and regions in Europe, not least because the proximity to the points of entry of trafficked individuals and/or to the places where exploitation takes place. Local and regional authorities necessarily take up an active role in the identification of and provision of support to victims of trafficking, and also to engage in awareness-raising campaigns, naturally in close cooperation with civil society organisations active on the ground.

This is why we chose to do an opinion on this topic, for which I had the honour of being the rapporteur.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I have been asked to speak about our work highlighting how it links with the activities of civil society in this field. I will thus try to pick up some points of our opinion, which I consider important and interesting from this point of view.

First of all, I would like to underline that local and regional authorities are in a very good position – perhaps better than the central/national ones – to recognise the signs that someone is a victim of human trafficking. Cities and regions offer a variety of social services and come in contact with many people. Of course this is done in partnership with organisations active on the ground. We are therefore convinced that the CoR could contribute to efforts to develop guidelines on victim identification and on child protection systems. We know ,accordingly to Europol, that 10 000 refugee children has disappeared in Europe and we fear that many of them are used by criminal networks. Some of the unaccompanied refugee children are paying for their trip by smuggle drugs or other criminal activities.

Secondly, our opinion is based on the application of multi-level governance to the fight against THB. According to this principle a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach – necessarily involving local and regional authorities, practitioners from "the streets" and civil society organisations – can underpin the effective implementation of the EU's strategy against THB. We have seen many good examples of such cooperation from various Member States. In the Netherlands there is a network of regional center for information and networks (RIEC) where different actors such as police, prosecutors, municipalities, tax  authorities actively cooperates to prevent organized crime. We are very happy to see that the Commission and the Council fully endorse this approach. Indeed, we have had very interesting exchanges with both institutions in this regard, especially on the administrative approach against THB, and I see promising ground to explore for meaningful cooperation.

Thirdly, the opinion highlights the role that local and regional authorities can play in raising awareness and disseminating information about trafficking in human beings. This is essential in prevention, because it makes citizens more sensitive to signs of trafficking. Here again this would not be possible without the strong involvement of associations and networks, which already operate at city or regional level and their cooperation with local police, administration and other stakeholders.

Finally, I would like to underline that we welcome the intention to to develop knowledge relating to the gender dimension of trafficking and vulnerable groups. At the same time we have urged the EU institutions not to focus on the gender dimension only in terms of victims but also to bear in mind that there are clear differences between the sexes at the demand side of the spectrum. I know that this is also an issue raised by a number of organisations.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The CoR plenary session at the end of January 2013 adopted this opinion unanimously. From the debate with the members it became clear that there is a lot of interest and different types of expertise on this topic in Europe's cities and regions. Three years have passed since then, and this topic has increased in importance. EU Action Plan against migrant smuggling (2015 - 2020) was published as part of the Europen Migration Agenda. Of course, there is no "one-size-fits-all" recipe to fight THB: approaches should be localised to take into account particular situations on the ground. This is why the active contribution from civil society organisations, NGO's but also practitioners and politicians from the local and regional level is very important for the success of our joined efforts. There is a lot of experience and competence among our local and regional politicians which can contribute to prevent and combat organized crime.

We in the Committee of the Regions are also very convionced that these problems cannot be solved without a prompt and concete involvement of the local (anche weherever possible regional) actors in the Eastern and Mediterranean areas of cooperation of the EU. In particular, I wish to highlight hat not oly information campaigns are important, but also setting up of EU cooperation platforms on migrant smuggling in relevant third countries and region and – quoting the action plan - launching or enhancing bilateral and regional cooperation frameworks optimising the use of EU funding through joint or coordinated planning involving the capacity builing skills of the European regional and local authorities.

I look forward to the debates and the meeting today and I also look forward to the active involvement of the CoR in the work to fight THB in the effort to build strong ties between practitioners on the ground and administrations at the local and regional level!

Thank you for your attention!