Since the late 1990s, the European Union has increased significantly its efforts against human trafficking. These efforts have, however, been fraught with contradictions, misconstrued as part of other policy debates (e.g. security, migration and enlargement) and generally ineffective in their ability to fight this global phenomenon. In practice, the EU has built a response to trafficking that privileges certain coercive practices (i.e. stronger borders, internal law enforcement and external state ‘capacity-building’) over comprehensive measures able to redress trafficking (i.e. prevention, prosecution and protection). It is the neglect of the latter that accounts, in part, for the transformation and persistence of the trafficking industry. The EU needs to address path dependencies that have led to the pursuit of a coercive and ineffective counter-trafficking governance system, paying particular attention both to the interaction between external and internal policy and to the unintended effects that this system has had on the practice of human trafficking. © 2008 Kluwer Law International BV.

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