By Lonel Zamfir

Increased political polarisation has led to a proliferation of attacks against elected representatives, political candidates and party members. Verbal abuse and insults, harassment, threats and intimidation, as well as smear campaigns against politicians, occur regularly both online and offline, marking a serious degradation in the quality of political debate in the EU. During the 2024 European elections campaign, there were serious incidents in several countries. Nevertheless, acts of physical violence remain isolated and less frequent in the EU than in many other parts of the world. Violence is a risk to which politicians have always been exposed, including in democratic regimes. Organised crime and radicalised individuals or groups resort to violence to promote their political or economic agendas. EU countries have been unevenly affected; violence linked to organised crime has particularly affected certain regions, especially southern Italy, where it has proven difficult to eradicate. By contrast, violence driven by political radicalisation is a more recent phenomenon and increasingly affects all EU countries – albeit to varying degrees – and tends to flare up during periods of heightened tension, such as election campaigns and large-scale public protests. The impact on political debate, free exchange of opinions and compromise-building is profoundly negative. Violence and intimidation pressure politicians to self-censor when addressing politically sensitive issues and, in some cases, to step out of politics altogether. To counter this, several EU countries have adopted preventive and protective measures, including regular data collection. Examples include classifying offences against elected representatives as aggravated offences, simplifying reporting, and providing training, counselling and emergency assistance. Parliaments have also promoted civility and mutual respect in debates through codes of conduct and have established support services such as legal aid

Brussels: EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service, 20252025. 11p.

By Institute For Economics & Peace

From the document: "The Ecological Threat Report (ETR) is a comprehensive, data-driven analysis covering 3,594 sub-national areas across 221 countries and territories. It covers 99.99 per cent of the world's population and assesses threats relating to food insecurity, water risk, demographic pressures, and natural disasters. This report identifies countries that have the highest risk, both now and in the future, of suffering from major disasters due to the ecological threats they face, the lack of societal resilience, and other factors. These countries are also the most likely to suffer from conflict. The 2023 ETR aims to provide an impartial, data-driven foundation for the debate about ecological threats facing countries and sub-national areas and to inform the design of resilience-building policies and contingency plans."

Institute For Economics & Peace . 2023. 77p.

By the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

In 2021, America experienced an unprecedented increase in cyber attacks and malicious cyber activity. These cyber attacks compromised businesses in an extensive array of business sectors as well as the American public. As the cyber threat evolves and becomes increasingly intertwined with traditional foreign intelligence threats and emerging technologies, the FBI continues to leverage our unique authorities and partnerships to impose risks and consequences on our nation’s cyber adversaries. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) provides the American public with a direct outlet to report cyber crimes to the FBI. We analyze and investigate the reporting to track the trends and threats from cyber criminals and then share this data with our intelligence and law enforcement partners. The FBI, alongside our partners, recognizes how crucial information sharing of cyber activities is to prepare our partners to combat the cyber threat, through a whole-of-government approach. Critical to that approach is public reporting to IC3 - enabling us to fill in the missing pieces with this valuable information during the investigatory process. Not only does this reporting help to prevent additional crimes, it allows us to develop key insights on the ever-evolving trends and threats we face from malign cyber actors. In 2021, IC3 continued to receive a record number of complaints from the American public: 847,376 reported complaints, which was a 7% increase from 2020, with potential losses exceeding $6.9 billion. Among the 2021 complaints received, ransomware, business e-mail compromise (BEC) schemes, and the criminal use of cryptocurrency are among the top incidents reported. In 2021, BEC schemes resulted in 19,954 complaints with an adjusted loss of nearly $2.4 billion.

Washington, DC: FBI, 2022. 33p.

By Charles Victor Barber, Karen Winfield, and Rachael Petersen 

Nature crime1 occurs when individuals or criminal networks illegally exploit natural ecosystems to extract natural resources. Nature crimes include illegal logging, illegal mining, illegal fishing, illegal wildlife trade,2 and the illegal conversion of forests and wetlands for agriculture or other uses. These crimes are often associated with financial crime of various types, as well as labor and human violations and official corruption. The prevalence of nature crime and associated corruption and criminal behavior constitutes a serious barrier to progress in tackling climate change, slowing biodiversity loss, reducing the risk of future zoonotic pandemics, and achieving sustainable, peaceful, and equitable human development. The scale of the nature crime economy is immense. It is variably estimated to be the third- or fourth-largest illicit economy in the world (after drug trafficking and trade in counterfeit goods) with an annual value of as much as $281 billion, but this figure underestimates its indirect impacts: governments are deprived annually of some $7-12 billion in timber and fisheries revenues, while the indirect costs of undermining ecosystem services may be as high as $1-2 trillion per year (World Bank 2019a).  

San Francisco: Climate and Forests 2030, 2021. 30p.