A new Council of Europe protocol is intended to strengthen cross-border investigations, confiscation and the recovery of criminal wealth. European authorities currently recover only a small proportion of the proceeds generated by organised and financial crime.

The European Union has signed an international agreement strengthening the recovery of criminal assets, as Brussels seeks to address the failure of national authorities to confiscate the overwhelming majority of wealth generated through organised crime, corruption and money laundering.

The agreement, opened for signature in Strasbourg on Wednesday, 14 October, introduces additional provisions governing the identification, freezing, confiscation and management of assets held across national borders.

It supplements the Council of Europe’s Warsaw Convention, which established an international framework for cooperation against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

The Additional Protocol adopted by the Council of Europe extends existing asset-recovery mechanisms and strengthens the ability of national authorities to cooperate when criminal proceeds are transferred beyond the country where an offence occurred.

The financial foundations of organised crime

European authorities have long struggled to deprive criminal organisations of the profits generated by their activities.

An estimate frequently cited by European institutions suggests that only around one per cent of criminal proceeds are ultimately confiscated.

The figure highlights a persistent weakness in criminal enforcement. Police and prosecutors may identify offenders and secure convictions without recovering the money used to finance further criminal operations.

Organised crime networks can distribute their assets through bank accounts, companies, property holdings and intermediaries operating in different jurisdictions.

Investigators must establish the origin and ownership of those assets, obtain the necessary legal orders and secure cooperation from foreign authorities before funds or property can be transferred again.

The problem has become increasingly serious as criminal organisations operate across several countries while enforcement powers remain largely national.

In an earlier examination of Europe’s response to drug-trafficking networks, EU Today reported on the importance of confiscating criminal assets rather than concentrating exclusively on arrests and drug seizures.

The financial structures supporting trafficking organisations can survive the prosecution of individual members, allowing criminal enterprises to replace personnel and continue operations.

New powers for cross-border investigations

The protocol is intended to address practical obstacles encountered when authorities seek assistance from another country.

Its provisions cover international cooperation in asset recovery, the management of seized property and the execution of confiscation decisions.

They also address circumstances in which confiscation may be possible without a conventional criminal conviction, subject to the safeguards and legal requirements established by participating states.

Such arrangements can be particularly relevant when suspects have fled, proceedings cannot be completed or assets are held through structures designed to conceal their ownership.

The protocol also provides for improved cooperation between designated asset-recovery authorities.

These mechanisms are intended to reduce the delays that can arise when investigators must navigate different national procedures while attempting to secure property that may be rapidly moved or disposed of.

The Council of Europe’s treaty documentation explains that the protocol seeks to update the Warsaw Convention in accordance with developments in international anti-money laundering standards.

The revised framework has also been developed with reference to EU rules and the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force.

Existing European legislation

The agreement builds on legislation already adopted within the European Union.

The 2024 Asset Recovery and Confiscation Directive established stronger provisions concerning the tracing, freezing, confiscation and management of assets associated with criminal activity.

That directive is intended to improve national asset-recovery systems and strengthen cooperation between authorities.

The EU has separately developed a new anti-money laundering framework, including the establishment of the Frankfurt-based Authority for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism.

The authority has responsibilities concerning the supervision of high-risk financial institutions and coordination between national bodies combating illicit financial activity.

The new Council of Europe protocol addresses a related but distinct problem: how authorities recover assets once suspected criminal proceeds have been identified, particularly when those assets are located in another jurisdiction.

An earlier EU Today report on criminal enforcement of sanctions violations illustrated the importance of asset confiscation in cases involving breaches of European restrictions.

Although sanctions enforcement and organised crime investigations operate under different legal arrangements, both can require authorities to identify property, obtain judicial orders and prevent assets from being moved beyond their reach.

Ratification and implementation

The protocol was adopted by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on 15 May 2026 and opened for signature on 14 October.

The European Union’s participation requires further legal procedures before the new provisions become binding.

The Commission had previously submitted proposals authorising the EU to sign the agreement, reflecting the division of responsibilities between the Union and its member states in criminal justice and financial regulation.

Individual governments must also determine how the international obligations interact with national procedures governing investigations, property rights and confiscation.

The effectiveness of the agreement will depend on the speed of its implementation and the resources available to investigators, prosecutors and financial intelligence authorities.

Criminal organisations can transfer funds internationally through transactions completed in minutes. Judicial cooperation and the enforcement of confiscation decisions frequently require considerably longer.

The protocol offers governments additional instruments for narrowing that gap, but cannot eliminate the administrative and legal obstacles without corresponding improvements in national enforcement.

For European authorities, the practical measure of success will be the amount of criminal wealth that can be identified and recovered.

The Strasbourg agreement provides a wider legal framework for that task at a time when the profits generated by organised crime continue to exceed the assets confiscated by enforcement agencies.

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Satire, however over-the-top, never quite measures up to reality.

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A thought experiment

Imagine that Giorgia Meloni, as Prime Minister, launches an app for newborns through which the government credits 1,000 euros to each child. She does so in an official capacity, via a government website and under a specific name: “Conto Giorgia.” Suppose the campaign promises parents that this capital will grow based on the historical performance of the FTSE MIB – the former MIB30 – provided they invest it on the stock market. Suppose the money comes largely from Italian taxpayers’ money and that the initiative has the blessing of a public statement signed by the nation’s capitalist elite: the Del Vecchio heirs, Marina Berlusconi, Giovanni Ferrero, Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone, and company. Such an initiative would raise an institutional issue even before a political one. Article 97 of the Constitution requires the public administration to act with due diligence and impartiality, and placing a personal brand on newborns’ savings is at odds with both.

In the United States, this is not just a hypothetical scenario. The Trump Accounts, accessible at trumpaccounts.gov, have been operational since July 4, 2026 – a date chosen to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. They were established by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by Donald Trump in the summer of 2025: tax-advantaged savings accounts governed by Section 530A of the federal tax code. The Treasury makes an initial contribution of $1,000 for children born during the pilot program period, from 2025 to 2028, and anyone else can add money: parents, relatives, employers, states, and private individuals. By default, the funds are invested in a State Street index fund, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF; among the alternatives that can be selected at a later date, the Treasury has included funds from BlackRock and Vanguard.

The launch followed the ritual one might expect. From the Oval Office, Trump rang the opening bell for the NYSE and Nasdaq, flanked by Michael and Susan Dell, who pledged $6.25 billion: $250 each into the accounts of 25 million children under the age of ten living in areas where the median income does not exceed $150,000. The president joked that those present “aren’t doing this for that reason,” and invited everyone to buy a Dell computer. BlackRock, State Street, Visa, and Mastercard had already joined the summit organized by the Treasury, alongside Dell Technologies and the Dells; the underlying idea is attributed to financier Brad Gerstner. The $1,000 in public funds serves as the initial capital to open the account, while the private funds carry less weight than the scene surrounding them.

What’s the problem?

It’s important to distinguish between what is documented and what is interpretation. The name is documented: the sitting president lends his last name to a government product, hosted on a government domain. There are precedents for policies named after individuals, such as the Roth IRA, named after Senator William Roth, but in that case the person was a lawmaker and the name remained a colloquial label, whereas “Obamacare” began as a controversial acronym and was only later adopted. Here, the name is official. Citizens receive the benefit from a man, not from a law, and with three weeks to go before the November 3 midterm elections, the effect of this personalization is far from neutral.

The chain of interests is also well documented. BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard manage the funds from which families will have to choose; Visa and Mastercard thrive on payment flows. That they derive a commercial advantage from this is an inference and should be treated as such. The fact remains that their brands appear alongside that of the government in the promotion, and that every dollar deposited into the accounts becomes assets under management. The Treasury, for its part, makes no secret of its ambition: Scott Bessent described the measure as the “greatest merger in history between Main Street and Wall Street,” within a framework – Parallel Prosperity – in which the two grow together.

Then there is the risk, which shifts from the government to families. One thousand dollars left for eighteen years at a nominal annual return of 7% – a theoretical scenario, not a forecast – grows to about $3,400. A useful sum, but one that does not constitute a safety net. The outcome will depend on market conditions in the year the child comes of age, and the family – not the one who made the promise – will bear the responsibility. A promise based on an index’s past performance sells confidence, yet past performance guarantees nothing.

The strongest objection must be taken seriously. The Treasury presents these accounts as a way to make the American Dream accessible to every citizen, and the idea of providing every child with a starting capital is defensible: stock ownership is concentrated among already affluent families, and an account opened at birth brings even those who would never have entered the market into it. This demonstrates that starting capital is a legitimate concept. It does not prove that it must bear the president’s name, nor that the sponsors can be the same as the fund managers, nor that stock capital can replace the guarantees that a welfare state should offer regardless of market conditions.

The Corpse

What remains is the political judgment, which is mine and not based on the facts. When the state links its authority to the name of a single man, entrusts promotion to those who manage savings, and promises newborns a future through the stock market, democracy recedes into the background and ceases to be the guiding principle. To speak of desecrating a corpse is a harsh turn of phrase, but it gets the point across: democratic rhetoric continues to circulate while its bulwarks – the impersonality of institutions and the separation between public and private interests – are being dismantled one by one. Those who exported it for decades through a series of interventions, it seems, left little of it at home.

On a friend’s recommendation, last night I watched Digger, a dystopian and grotesque film starring Goodman and Cruise. You leave the theater with the same impression: the satire, however over-the-top, never quite measures up to reality, and not even two excellent actors can push beyond a caricature that has since become everyday news.

A Russian attack on Sloviansk on 13 October wounded members of a Ukrainian Red Cross team, the Ukrainian Red Cross Society reported. The same day, a Russian bomb hit the city’s invincibility point, one of the state-run hubs where residents warm up and charge phones when power goes out.

Help is getting harder to reach in Sloviansk. Public transport stopped after a Russian strike on two buses in nearby Kramatorsk killed 30 people on 8 October. From 1 November, a curfew from 16:00 to 11:00 will cover nearly all of Donetsk Oblast’s free territory. The people providing help are hit too. Russian drones struck three ambulances in Kramatorsk on 5 October. In August, a Russian strike destroyed a World Health Organization humanitarian warehouse in Dnipro.

Team had moved from Lyman

Three members of the society’s Lyman city branch were hurt. The branch had moved to Sloviansk because of the security situation and kept working there. All three were hospitalized with shrapnel wounds and burns. The building where the team worked took heavy damage, and a fire caused by the attack damaged the organization’s property.

The society’s Donetsk Oblast branch later added that a fourth person suffered a concussion, and that all four were hospitalized. The Red Cross condemned attacks on civilian infrastructure and humanitarian workers.

Bomb hit the warming center

The strike came at 12:45 in the Lisnyi microdistrict, Sloviansk city military administration head Vadym Liakh wrote. He later identified the weapon as a FAB-250, a 250-kg air-dropped bomb. Eight people were injured, and five apartment blocks were damaged, Liakh said. He described the warming center’s building as damaged, while Suspilne Donbas reported it destroyed.

Two Russian strikes on Sloviansk that day killed at least one person, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin wrote. Liakh said a Russian attack on the Semenivka neighborhood killed a 55-year-old woman. On 14 October, Filashkin reported that Russian attacks killed three people across Donetsk Oblast on 13 October, in Sloviansk, Druzhkivka, and Starovarvarivka.

At Bybi in Copenhagen, a dedicated group of staff and volunteers have built a community for all centred on the production of honey – much of which is given away for nothing. Could it be replicated elsewhere?

The bees at Bybi, a collective of beekeepers in Copenhagen, live on the roof. Their home is a complex of Victorian buildings, right in the centre of the city, that looks like an idealised vision of the modern social enterprise, ennobled by the architecture of the past. It’s a place of cottage industry in concert with nature, where the marginalised are brought in from the fringes and corporations stand waiting to help, where jobs happen but a lot of the work is done by volunteers, and where – this bit is important – a lot of time is spent discussing ideas.

Oliver Maxwell, Bybi’s 48-year-old founder, encourages me to examine the buildings more closely. They were once a prison, a workhouse and a hospital; their functions today – a homeless shelter, a young offender institution and, until recently, a job centre – are not so different. Denmark’s Victorian transformation, from “agricultural backwater to industrialised agriculture”, was reflected in how they treated people, Maxwell says.

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© Photograph: Valdemar Ren/The Guardian

© Photograph: Valdemar Ren/The Guardian

© Photograph: Valdemar Ren/The Guardian

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As abductions go, few have been more brazen. Alan Jalloh was with two friends outside Goodies supermarket, frantic as usual with late afternoon shoppers. Rush hour in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, was under way with familiar gusto.

A black Toyota Rav4 forced its way through the Peninsula highway traffic. Witnesses describe burly white men leaping out, yanking on balaclavas. Jalloh, 40, seemed to freeze. As did his two friends, one a famous Freetown footballer. All three were dragged into the waiting SUV. None of them have been seen since.

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© Composite: Guardian Design

© Composite: Guardian Design

© Composite: Guardian Design