Antimafia cross-border: conceptual and procedural asymmetries in the fight against Italian mafias in Europe

This paper explores some of the challenges to fighting against Italian mafias and mafia-type organised crime in Europe, specifically in 8 countries – Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Romania, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Data has been collected and analysed in two phases: first, from open sources (including media and official reports) and judicial files; second, from 40 individual or collective interviews. European institutions still struggle to counter the mobility of Italian mafias because of conceptual asymmetries in policing mafia-type crimes/groups and procedural challenges. We present two analytical foci: first, the existence of a conceptual tension in the definition of mafia and mafia mobility between Italy and European countries and institutions; second, emerging procedural asymmetries in countering mafias across borders, which relate more broadly to cross-border countering of organised crime. This paper wishes to screenshot the state of the art and advance some reflections, without pushing any specific theoretical framework. After exploring the two main analytical foci emerging in this research, we advance recommendations.