European Union member states could have the power to confiscate and freeze proceeds from organised crime through a legislative initiative aimed at fighting criminals.

The rules will enhance a country’s ability to confiscate assets transferred to third parties and make it easier to seize criminal assets even when the suspect would have fled.

The move, which requires the approval of member states and the European Parliament, will ensure that the competent authorities can temporarily freeze assets that risk disappearing if no action is taken.

“We need to hit criminals where it hurts by going after the money and we have to get their profits back into the legal economy, especially in these times of crisis,” European Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström told a press conference in Brussels.

“Law enforcement and judicial authorities must have better tools to follow the money trail. They also need greater means with which to recover a more significant proportion of criminal assets,” she said.

The amounts recovered from organised crime are modest if compared to the huge revenue generated by illegal activities, such as drug trafficking, counterfeiting, human trafficking and small arms smuggling. Although difficult to have precise information, UN estimates show that in 2009 the amount of criminal profits was approximately $2.1 trillion, or 3.6 of global GDP for that year.

Although there are no general estimates of the size of criminal profits in the EU, last year Italy alone estimated annual crime revenues of about €150 billion while in the UK organised criminal revenue was estimated at £15 billion in 2006.

All EU member states will be required to regularly collect data on confiscation and asset recovery.