The European Commission plans a business coalition against human trafficking and closer cooperation on online investigations under a strategy published on 16 October 2026. Its proposals bring employers, labour inspectors and digital services into the response. The programme will be discussed by the European Parliament and Council; it does not itself create a new criminal law.

The strategy supports voluntary business participation, better coordination of labour inspections and cross-border financial investigations. It also seeks safer reporting channels and stronger protection during migration and crises. These are planned actions, rather than evidence that a coalition or new reporting service is already operating. The Commission will work with national coordinators, civil society and EU agencies on implementation.

Registered cases and the limits of the figures

The accompanying statistical working document records 20,022 trafficking victims across the EU in 2023 and 2024, compared with 17,248 in 2021 and 2022. That is a 16.1 per cent increase between the two reporting periods. It is not a count of cases occurring in 2026. The annual totals were 10,556 in 2023 and 9,466 in 2024, so the two-year increase should not be read as an uninterrupted annual rise. These figures concern people recorded by registering organisations, rather than an estimate of everybody subjected to trafficking.

The same document records 6,965 victims of labour exploitation in 2023 and 2024, up from 5,940 in the preceding two-year period. Labour exploitation includes domestic work, care activities and cleaning services. Its citizenship breakdown includes 318 Indian nationals among registered victims of labour exploitation. Across all forms of trafficking, 64 per cent of victims whose citizenship was known were non-EU nationals. The report cautions that many victims remain undetected and excludes unknown values from relevant breakdowns. Those limits matter when comparing countries or interpreting the figures: recorded cases cannot establish the full scale of exploitation.

Existing protections and warning signs

The existing legal framework provides a different set of obligations from the new strategy. The Commission's explanation of the revised Anti-Trafficking Directive says the 2024 changes explicitly cover exploitation involving forced marriage, surrogacy and illegal adoption. They also address trafficking offences committed or facilitated through information and communication technologies in relation to sexual exploitation. The revision entered into force on 14 July 2024, with two years allowed for national transposition. Those dates belong to the earlier legislation, not the policy programme announced this week.

The revision also requires formal national referral mechanisms, which connect potential victims with the authorities and organisations responsible for assistance. The Commission identifies better coordination between these mechanisms and asylum authorities as another change. Other provisions concern training professionals likely to encounter victims, using technological capabilities and criminalising the knowing use of services obtained from trafficked people. The framework combines investigation and prosecution with assistance and protection. It also formalises annual EU-wide data collection by Eurostat, providing a continuing basis for assessing reported trafficking trends.

For people trying to recognise possible exploitation, the Commission's existing public-awareness campaign sets out practical warning signs. They include someone being accompanied whenever they travel to or from work, being unable to speak freely, or having another person speak for them. Other indicators concern isolation from family and friends, an employer controlling accommodation and transport, restricted movement, or living at the workplace in unsuitable conditions. The guidance asks whether the person retains their own identity and travel documents and whether someone else takes their earnings.

These indicators are prompts for attention, not proof against a particular person or business. The campaign expressly warns that their presence or absence cannot by itself confirm or rule out trafficking, because individual situations differ. Its purpose is to help people notice possible exploitation, report concerns and support those affected. The Commission also directs people to national support hotlines. Anyone using that resource needs the relevant country's entry; a contact listed for one country should not be assumed to cover the whole European Union.

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