Samenvatting

Drawing from my doctoral research which focused inter alia on the unique Belgian legal framework, also from an empirical perspective, this paper seeks to address this conceptual contradiction visible in the European Commission’s proposal. More specifically, the paper identifies some of the (conceptual and/or legal) ambiguities present in both the proposed EU legal framework that will be negotiated later this year as well as in the current Belgian legal framework and argues that some of them can potentially be resolved through mutual inspiration. Indeed, the Belgian model appears to be more coherent on its conceptualisation of victimhood and rightfully incorporates corresponding protective measures for aggravated smuggled victims in place, whilst still having the need for efficient judicial and law enforcement investigation in mind, which appears to be the European Commission’s main concern.