The administrative approach to counter activities of high-risk criminal networks and individuals is a complementary way to prevent and tackle the misuse of legal infrastructure through multi-agency cooperation by sharing information and taking actions to set up barriers and to prevent infiltration of serious and organised crime into the legal economy.
This approach is identified as an effective tool for combating organised crime groups in both the EU Roadmap to Fight Drug Trafficking and Organised Crime (2023) and the EU Internal Security Strategy Protect EU (2025). In this context, the EU Member States are working on various initiatives to strengthen and further implement the administrative approach at national and international level, e.g., in ENAA, EMPACT, EURIEC, the ISF project PREVENT and the Coalition European Countries against Organised Crime. One of these initiatives is Operational Action 9.1 – Administrative Approach in the EMPACT Priority High Risk Criminal Networks (HRCN) under Italian Lead and co-Lead by Germany and the ENAA Secretariat (2023-2025). The Operational Action aims to further implement the administrative approach as a means of combating organised crime groups within the Member States and to strengthen the cross-border exchange of operational data for administrative purposes.