Positioning organised property crime

• Author: Directorate-General for Internal Policies of the Union (European Parliament)
• Pages: 10-16

IPOL | Affairs

10 PE 656.042

1.

There is no shared definition of Organised Property Crime. The definition problem arises from the

different social phenomena that Organised Property Crime includes or is thought to include,

in the use of this concept it is possible to say that OPC stays in a wide spectrum that goes from crimes

against property and petty crimes

committed by gangs or other criminals. This spectrum is represented in the table below that shows

how different MS deal with the problem.

Table 1: Organised Property Crime in MS

Source: Elaboration of Transcrime from EUCPN national reports (EUCPN, 2018).

Country

Definition of criminal

organisation (source)

Legal definition OPC

Distinction OPC and

property crimes

National strategy

against OPC

National strategy

against Property

Crimes

Belgium

YES (Criminal Code-

Section 324bis)

NO

NO

NO

YES

Cyprus

YES (Criminal Code-

Section 63a)

NO

YES

YES

YES

Czech

Republic

YES (Criminal Code-

Section 129)

NO

NO

NO

YES

Denmark

NO

NO

NO

NO

YES

Estonia

YES (Criminal Code-

Section 255)

NO

YES

NO

YES

Germany

YES (Criminal Code-

Section 30)

NO

YES

YES

YES

Greece

YES (Criminal Code-

Section 187)

NO

YES

YES

YES

Hungary

YES (Criminal Code-

Section 459)

NO

NO

NO

YES

Latvia

YES (Criminal Code-

Section 21)

NO

YES

YES

YES

Romania

YES (Criminal Code-

Section 367)

NO

NO

NO

YES

Spain

YES (Criminal Code-

Section 570bis)

NO

YES

YES

YES