• Trafficking in human beings
• Panel data.
• Migration
• Transnational Crime

Almost twenty years have passed since the approval of the first international treaty against human trafficking, the so-called Palermo Protocol. After that, given the centrality of Europe in the last migratory flows and its historical commitment to the respect and protection of human rights, the European Union has rationalized its efforts against this tremendous crime, creating special task forces and beginning an interesting and unique data collection process. Unfortunately, such a process has not been immune from methodological problems and delay that have hampered the research and knowledge of the phenomenon. As a matter of fact, too little is still known about the determinants of trafficking in human beings within Europe and the quality and availability of data is still an issue in the field. Nevertheless, this thesis, using a novel panel dataset constructed from Eurostat statistical working papers on human trafficking, aims precisely at given a deeper insights on the factors which might explain why this phenomenon is pervasive in the European Union and what are the factors that explain high number of victims in some european countries.