The number of suspected traffickers decreased by 8.0 % compared with the previous year, but remained still relatively high compared with the period 2008-2018, mainly due to an increase in France and Italy for the years 2019 and 2020.
The number of convicted persons decreased by 24.9 % between 2019 and 2020 and the figure for convicted persons is still much lower than the number of those suspected of trafficking in human beings.
"As some EU Member States had not reported data for some years, the observed trend has to be interpreted with caution. The Covid-19 effects should also be taken into account when interpreting the trends," warned Eurostat.
In 2020, there were 15 registered victims of trafficking in human beings per one million inhabitants in the EU, compared to 17 in 2019. In 2020, the highest rates in the EU were observed in the Netherlands (57), Austria (43) and Romania (31), while the lowest rates were observed in Czechia (2), Croatia and Estonia (both 4). For Latvia the figure was 25, resulting from 48 victims of human trafficking. Only 2 people were convicted of human trafficking in 2020.
"Higher rates could be also linked to a greater capacity of the judiciary and social system to identify victims," said Eurostat.
In 2020, for the EU as a whole, 40.7 % of the registered victims came from the reporting country, 17.3 % from other EU countries and 42.0 % from non-EU countries. As the crime of trafficking does not require the crossing of borders, victims with the citizenship of the reporting country can return from abroad or be exploited in their own country. In Latvia the majority of victims of human trafficking were from non-EU countries.
The victims’ citizenship varies considerably across the EU. Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia and Lithuania reported mostly victims from their own countries, while more than 75 % of the registered victims in Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Belgium, Denmark and Slovenia came from non-EU countries.
