European Union Criminal Policy and Joint Investigation Teams. The Case of Hellas

It is common belief that organized crime has enormous social cost as it removes and squander financial and human resources, creates distortions in the common free market, influences the legal economy and action of enterprises, strengthens the corruption and violating human rights. Organized crime acts now on a transnational and cross-border basis, exploits for its benefit globalization, the abolition of border controls within the European Union (EU) and the legislative differences between Member States (MS), in order to accrue more and larger profits. For this reason, should be combated with the same approach by the prosecuting authorities of the MS and on a unified basis. The consequences of this phenomenon, largely affect the obligations of the European Union (EU) versus its citizens and that is why is necessary one coherent political action of institutions for the fight against organized crime, which will have specific and important effects. In this context in this brief study will be examined the role of Joint Investigation Teams (JIT) which have set up in the EU and aiming at a better tackling of organized crime as also and of serious crime, through cooperation among Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) and judicial authorities.