Abstract
With the French and Dutch voters recent rejection of the proposed constitutional treaty for the European Union, a treaty with a number of proposals in the field of Justice and Home Affairs, has been postponed. However, both EU leaders and the general public continue to place high expectations on this specific policy area, which has witnessed a particularly rapid development since the Treaty of Maastricht. The fight against organised crime at the EU level is only one aspect among other policies, but it too has been increasingly emphasised over the past few years, even if the first European-wide initiatives against organised crime date back to the seventies. Back in the 1970s, the Trevi Group, called after a meeting in Rome, was designed to provide a basis for greater European co-operation to combat terrorism. In an opaque and informal fashion, the Trevi strategy was barely concerned with the implication of border controls between member states. Then, the Trevi strategy created issues of illegal immigration, drugs, as well as serious and organised crime .
