Throughout the past 19 years attendees have always been enthusiastic contributors of presentations and papers to be published in a volume that steadily follows within a year after the last colloquium. We would like to take the opportunity to say thanks to all of those who presented at and wrote for the colloquium.

Despite all the enthusiasm, of both authors and editors, it sometimes requires a more authoritative leader figure ;) to make sure all papers are submitted in time and revisions are made before the pressing deadlines dictated by the publisher and next year`s colloquium.

Petrus C. van Duyne has been the driving force behind (more than) 19 years of colloquia. He made the colloquia possible by organising them, presenting and co-presenting, contributing as author, co-author and editor-in-chief and chief-whip. By doing so, he provided a platform for both young academic talent to meet with seasoned experts in the field, to present research findings to an expert audience and share it with the wider world through the colloquium publications.

So, thank you Petrus! You have been a true General, leading the troops from the front!

The Cross-border Crime Colloquium Associates

This is not a very surprising observation. Basically it is the same old song: retrospectively humans remain true to themselves in manifesting the same basic greedy criminal conduct over time and space. One would almost resign to such a tedious story, if it were not for the good message: one always finds counter-movements working against such abuses. Whether and to what extent such counter-movements are coherent and cost-effective is difficult to judge, though all these lofty intentions must be followed with a critical eye. The crime-money hunt has a quarter-century history by now, but the crime-monies still abound; all new EU Member States have Anti Corruption Agencies, but corruption continues to be rampant in those countries; the financial sector has been turned inside out, but old habits have returned.

This thirteenth volume of the Cross-border Crime Colloquium, a mainstay in the critical discourse on crime and crime-control in Europe, contains the peer-reviewed contributions of 27 international experts shedding light on the wide range of topics related to greed and crime: corruption, money laundering, underground economy and criminal financial policy. The chapters are based on empirical data or critical theorising and highlight new aspects of this field..

• Threat assessments: what became true?
• Crime-money: what happened to the multi-billion proceeds?
• Victims of human trafficking: how many and where are they now?
• The hazy horizons of cyber crime and new criminals
• Corruption: old and new EU member states. Who cleans up?
• Anti organised crime institutions: do they make a difference?

Order at: Wolf Legal Publishers, wlp@hetnet.nl

For reaction: Petrus@uvt.nl

Or you can order the entire volume at: Wolf Legal Publishers, wlp@hetnet.nl

For reaction: Petrus@uvt.nl

This volume can be ordered by sending an e-mail to info@cross-border-crime.net or by using the PDF order form: click here.

For a complete overview of all contributions, click the Volumes link in the menu in the left of the screen.

While the European Union is groping for political and economic consolidation, one may wonder whether criminal businesses in and between the Member States are not consolidating as well. Are there indications that the crime-markets in Europe are shrinking? Or has the EU become more attractive for certain manifestations of the criminal economy, for example by increasing taxes for coveted commodities like tobacco? This increased potential crimi-nal profit margin is certainly a stimulus for enterprising criminals. However, this attractiveness should be lowered by the `high-density` laws and regula-tions drafted to prevent the laundering of illegal profits. Who is attracted to crime-for-profit if these profits cannot be spent safely? Given the ongoing crime trade the prospects of making money by engaging in criminal entrepreneurship apparently have not yet waned.

In this seventh volume of the Cross-border Crime Colloquium, experts from seven Member States of the European Union present their findings and opinions concerning the various manifestations of crime-trades and criminal fi- nances in the EU. They present an analysis of the anti-money laundering regulations, the very modest successes in this field, a selection of the criminal markets in Europe and the related organised crime imagery. The volume also addresses the question whether the legislative responses are really commensurate to the nature of the threats posed by crime-entrepreneurs.

This 8th CCC volume contains contributions from Petrus C. van Duyne, Joeb Rietrae, Andre Tilleman, Kauko Aromaa and Martti Lehti, Jon Spencer, Per Ole Johansen, Klaus von Lampe, Maarten van Dijck, Anna Markina, Anna Markovska and Katja Sugman and Matjaz Jager.

This volume can be ordered by sending an e-mail to info@cross-border-crime.net or by using the PDF order form: click here.

For a complete overview of all contributions, click the Volumes link in the menu in the left of the screen.

Titles of proposed papers, plus abstracts of approximately 350 words are invited no later than 31 March 2007.

The HUMSEC project, invites suggestions for presentations at this conference to be held in Sarajevo, 4-6 October 2007. The working language of the conference will be English and all presentations/papers will be in English.

Suggestions received by 31 March 2007 will enjoy priority consideration by a conference-planning group in Podgorica in late April. Applicants will be contacted (by email) with a response, and possibly with a suggestion for fine-tuning. Submissions received later may be considered, depending on the fullness of the conference programme by that time.

Please study the Conference Themes, then follow the Submission Procedure below.

CONFERENCE THEMES

Presentations may cover one or more of the following:

The second conference of the HUMSEC project focuses on the multiple interactions among transnational illegal organizations, state institutions, and the civil society in the Balkan region, and how these influence post-conflict capacity building. Contributions by regional experts, comparativists and theory-oriented social scientists, as well as governmental and non-governmental practitioners are particularly welcome.

Presentations may cover one or more of the following:

Thematic Bloc 1: The Rise and Demise of Transnational Terrorist and Criminal Organizations

The emergence and proliferation of transnational terrorist and criminal organzations The role of external actors in the Balkan region Political and economic agendas of non-state violent actors: Greed, grievance, or both? Deconstructing and reconstructing designations: ?terrorism?, ?organized crime?, ?legality?, and ?human security? Thematic Bloc 2: Conflict and the Transformation of State and Society

Public and private responses to political violence and the Security Sector reform The strategic interactions of networks, international and local actors, and the role of borderlands in post-conflict societies Peacekeeping, peacebuilding and conflicting agendas in counter-terrorism and counter-crime policies Legitimacy, efficiency, and implementation gaps in post-conflict capacity building

Thematic Bloc 3: Strategies of Repoliticization and Reintegration of Conflict Actors

Mechanisms of actors? transformation during and after conflict settlement Incentives to prevent conflict actors from becoming spoilers to the peacebuiding process The dynamics of institutional inclusion and exclusion of conflict actors Unintended Consequences of counter-crime and counter-terror strategies.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

Each presentation at the conference will be in English language and will be expected to take 15-20 minutes, before discussion. Please submit your suggestion for a presentation by using the online form.

You may submit one or two proposals. It is unlikely that two presentations would be accepted from the same person or institution, however you may wish to offer alterna-tives. If wishing to submit two proposals, please make two separate submissions.

This call is issued on behalf of the project coordinator and the members of the HUMSEC 2 group.

Ludwig-Maximilians-University (HUMSEC 2 coordinator),

Danish Centre for International Studies and Human Rights,

University of Montenegro,

University of Sarajevo,

University of Graz,

University of Shkoder Luigj Gurakuqi.

CALL FOR PAPERS

?Corruption and Democracy in Europe: Public Opinion and Social Representations?

We wish to organise panels for the ECPR General Conference in Pisa, 6 ? 8 September 2007. The panel(s) will be entitled ?Corruption and Democracy in Europe: Public Opinion and Social Representations?. Anyone who would like to give a paper should e-mail Oscar Mazzoleni (oscar.mazzoleni@ti.ch), Jim Newell (j.l.newell@salford.ac.uk) or Odette Tomescu-Hatto (odette.hatto@sciences-po.org) by no later than 10 February with a short abstract (circa 300 words) describing the paper they want to present.

The point of departure for the panel is three-fold: 1) awareness of the importance of public confidence in the standards of conduct of the holders of public office as a key variable impacting on the stability and effectiveness of democratic regimes; 2) awareness that concerns about such conduct have come to be an increasingly prominent feature of public life in European societies over the past two decades; 3) awareness that there are few studies of the expectations and perceptions of general publics in relation to the standards of conduct of public office holders.

At the most general level, therefore, the purpose of the panels will be to explore, on a cross-national, comparative basis: (1) the kinds of conduct/practices have been made visible to the public and how; (2) the current ?state of the art? regarding research into public norms and values, and into perceptions and evaluations of the conduct of public office-holders; (3) the related theoretical and conceptual issues that require addressing in order to advance beyond the current position and enable us to establish (a) what publics regard as acceptable and unacceptable on the part of public office-holders and how such attitudes vary; (b) how far the behaviour of public office-holders is in fact perceived as acceptable and how such perceptions vary; (c) how far publics believe that public office-holders will be held to account when their behaviour is unacceptable and how such beliefs vary; (d) how office-holders (or office-seekers) try to use (anti-)corruptive rhetoric in political competition.

Within these broad themes, we welcome papers focussing on any specific aspect of corruption and related behaviours; their social representation; policy makers? responses to concerns about corruption and related behaviours.

Details of the conference can be found on the ECPR?s web site at: www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/

This volume can be ordered by sending an e-mail to info@cross-border-crime.net or by using the PDF order form: click here.

This 7th CCC volume contains contributions from Petrus C. van Duyne, Almir Maljevic, Klaus von Lampe, Maarten van Dijck, Anna Markina, Rob Hornsby, Karen Verpoest, Barbara Vettori, Miroslav Scheinost, Brendan Quirke, Norbert Wagner, Martin Boberg, Uwe Beckmann, Thomas Schulte and James L. Newell.

For a complete overview of all contributions, click the Volumes link in the menu in the left of the screen.

However, the most significant changes are underneath this new skin. The entire website is now generated from a database. This database the content managers to keep the website up-to-date with a minimum of effort and time investment. This way we hope we will offer a more dynamic website containing relevant information, not only on the CCC activities, but also on organised crime research in general.

We, therefore, would like to invite all visitors to submit announcements or news items which you think will be interesting to other visitors as well. Feel free to submit any content or suggestion to info@cross-border-crime.net

The presentations were of good quality and the discussions following the presentations lively. A great variety of topics were adressed, clustered in four clusters: money laundering, cigarette smuggling, human smuggling and traffing and corruption.

The Colloquium Associates would like to say a word of thank to the hosts: Unversity of Tartu and the EU Netherlands-Estonia Twinning project on money laundering.