How AI, corruption and digital tools fuel Europe’s criminal underworld

Europol has released its 2025 report on serious and organized crime in the EU. The EU Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (EU-SOCTA) is based on intelligence from EU countries and global law enforcement. The findings are stark. Organized crime is becoming more complex and harmful, with deeper roots across Europe.

Organized crime is changing fast

The structure of organized crime is shifting. Groups are no longer tied to old ways of working. They’ve adapted to a world shaped by global instability, digital tools, and new technologies.

Europol’s 2025 report outlines three key trends shaping serious and organized crime:

1. Crime is more destabilizing

Organized crime doesn’t just threaten public safety. It also weakens the EU’s institutions and social fabric.

Inside the EU, this happens through money laundering, corruption, violence, and the use of young people to commit crimes. Outside the EU, criminal groups are teaming up with state-linked actors, playing a role in broader political and hybrid threats.

2. Crime thrives online

The internet is now central to organized crime. Nearly every type of serious crime has a digital side – whether used as a tool, a target, or a way to hide illegal activity.

Criminals use the internet to commit fraud, spread ransomware, sell drugs, and move money. They hide behind digital infrastructure and use stolen data as currency.

3. Crime is speeding up with AI and new tech

Criminals are quick to take advantage of new technologies. AI helps them work faster, smarter, and at greater scale.

The same things that make AI powerful for business—speed, flexibility, and access—also make it valuable for crime. These tools allow criminals to automate tasks, avoid detection, and expand their reach.

The fastest-growing threats

This criminal DNA is embedded in the most pressing security threats identified in the EU-SOCTA 2025. The report highlights seven key areas where criminal networks are becoming more sophisticated and dangerous:

• Cyber-attacks, mostly ransomware but increasingly targeting critical infrastructure, governments, businesses, and individuals – often with state-aligned objectives.
• Online fraud schemes, increasingly driven by AI-powered social engineering and access to vast amounts of data, including stolen personal information.
• Online child sexual exploitation, with generative AI producing child sexual abuse material and facilitating online grooming.
• Migrant smuggling, with networks charging extortionate fees and showing complete disregard for human dignity, exploiting geopolitical crises.
• Drug trafficking, a diversifying market with changing routes, tactics, and growing violence and youth recruitment across the EU.
• Firearms trafficking, which is expanding due to technological advancements, online marketplaces, and weapons availability in Europe.
• Waste crime, an often overlooked but lucrative sector where criminals exploit legitimate businesses, severely harming the environment.

While some threats play out in the physical world, elements of every criminal process are increasingly moving online – from recruitment and communication to payment systems and AI-driven automation.

“The very DNA of organised crime is changing. Criminal networks have evolved into global, technology-driven criminal enterprises, exploiting digital platforms, illicit financial flows and geopolitical instability to expand their influence. They are more adaptable, and more dangerous than ever before. Breaking this new criminal code means dismantling the systems that allow these networks to thrive – targeting their finances, disrupting their supply chains and staying ahead of their use of technology. Europol is at the heart of Europe’s fight against organised crime, but staying ahead of this evolving threat means reinforcing our capabilities – expanding our intelligence, operational reach and partnerships to protect the EU’s security for the years to come,” said Catherine De Bolle, Europol Executive Director.

Cracking the code of organized crime

The top threats highlighted in the EU-SOCTA 2025 report share common features. These features make them stronger and harder to stop. To fight serious and organised crime effectively, police need to focus not just on individual crimes, but also on the patterns and tools that tie them together.

Criminal groups are quick to adapt. They use technology and AI to hide their activities and boost their operations. Some work as proxies for state-linked actors, especially online. Others operate across borders, or even from prison, changing their methods to stay one step ahead.

Criminal money moves through a parallel financial system built to protect and grow illegal profits. This system is becoming more advanced. It uses digital platforms, blockchain, and other tools that make it harder to detect and shut down.

Corruption is a key part of the problem. It helps criminal networks gain access and avoid detection. That means targeting people who control or manage digital systems. Criminals use online platforms to find and recruit them.

Violence linked to organised crime is growing in many EU countries. It’s spreading beyond the criminal world and affecting wider society. These groups use encrypted apps and online platforms to recruit, threaten, and coordinate across borders.

Criminals are also using young people to do their dirty work. This protects the leaders at the top, who stay out of reach while younger recruits take the risks.

These tactics all feed into each other. They help criminal networks grow stronger, make more money, and stay hidden. To break this cycle, law enforcement needs to go after both the crimes and the systems that keep them going.