Smuggling of Migrants is and Should be Established as an Autonomous Offence

The present paper critically analyses the European Union legislation on smuggling of migrants. According to the author’s opinion, the EU legislature and the majority of the European countries have confused this specific crime, regulated by international law in the Palermo Convention, with the offence of facilitating irregular immigration. This undue overlap between different types of crime generates multiple and complex problems. In first place, the paper studies the elements of smuggling of migrants in international law. In second place, it examines the reasons why is not convenient to conceive this crime and the offence of facilitating irregular immigration as functional equivalents. Finally, the paper proposes to clearly differentiate the elements of both crimes and their respective scopes of application.