Rescuing Refugees in the context of Europe’s Fight Against Human Smuggling

Human smuggling has been considered a crime in the European context since the beginning of the 2000s. It has been defined in the Council Directive 2002/90/EC as the facilitation of unauthorized entry, transit, and residence, and is conceived as covering all phases and all types of migrant smuggling. Over the last two years sentences for human smuggling have gone up and, in the context of the current ‘refugee crisis’, new solutions to fight human smuggling are at the forefront.