At the same time, criminal organisations and individual criminals, from both within
and outside Europe, have been moving through a steady progression, demonstrating
their ability to forge alliances and operate across borders in all parts of Europe, thus
further complicating detection work and subsequent criminal prosecution in individual
member states.
Since 1958 the Council of Europe’s European Committee on Crime Problems
(CDPC) has contributed to the development of international criminal law, drafting a
number of important legal instruments in the fight against TOC. Moreover, criminal
law issues have recently been identified by the Committee of Ministers as one of the
top priorities in the work programme of the Council of Europe for the years to come.8