About ENFAST and Europol
Established in 2013, the European Network of Fugitive Action Search Teams (ENFAST) is an informal international network of specialised police officers from numerous European Union (EU) member states who are contactable on a 24/7 basis to respond to alerts to locate and arrest wanted fugitives in Europe. ENFAST is supported in its efforts by the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), the EU’s national law enforcement agency.
ENFAST presidency
ENFAST has a rotating two-year presidency, with the current 2024-25 German FAST team presidency scheduled to be replaced for the 2026-27 rotation with a trio-presidency comprised of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The rotating presidency is responsible for ensuring the continued operation of ENFAST and organising both the Core Group Meetings as well as “the General assemblies of the 27 EU Member States with Europol, Interpol, United Kingdom, US Marshalls Service, Switzerland, Norway, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Iceland, Canada and Australia as partners”.
EU Most Wanted site
Launched in 2016, the EU Most Wanted (EUMW) website publishes information on Europe’s most high-profile criminals who have been either charged with or convicted of serious crimes. The site is hosted by Europol and managed by national FAST teams who are located in EU member states and are responsible for uploading and publishing information about wanted fugitives, as well as receiving alerts about leads, should any become available.
The landing page provides thumbnail images of all currently-known wanted fugitives, each of whom has their own unique biography page that provides background information that includes:
- Age
- Date of birth
- Country of origin
- The date the alert was published
- Their current status and reasons for being wanted (e.g. murder, extortion, laundering proceeds of crime, etc.)
- The intended maximum sentencing
- A summary of the crimes they committed
Each suspect’s biography page also provides additional photos or recent sketches (if necessary), links to wanted postings from the fugitive’s country of origin, and a potential reward for decisive tips that result in an arrest being made. If a wanted fugitive has been arrested, their photo is removed from the landing page and their profile ceases to be accessible.
A December 2025 press release from Europol also noted that a recent feature added to help spur faster action from the public is the addition of an email alert feature that would allow users to receive email notifications when new wanted fugitives are added to the site.
Operational Taskforce GRIMM
The EUMW also hosts information on high-value targets who have been identified as being involved with or having ties to organised crime networks such as violence-as-a-service (VaaS), where violent acts such as assault, drug trafficking, extortion, and killing for a fee are outsourced to others, including minors, through a four-stage recruitment process.
To combat VaaS networks, a Swedish-led taskforce known as Operational Taskforce (OTF) GRIMM was launched in April 2025 that is still ongoing and coordinated through the European Serious and Organised Crime Centre (ESOCC), and whose attempts at combatting and dismantling these networks involves posting known recruiters and suspects on the EUMW.
Outcomes and statistics
Europol regularly publishes press releases that highlight arrests that were made possible as a result of the EUMW. One recent success story involved a Hungarian fugitive who Europol announced as having been arrested “three days after his profile was published on the platform”.
Europol has stated that since the site’s launch in 2016, the EUMW has facilitated in “the arrest of 172 fugitives, with 54 arrests directly resulting from public tips submitted through the platform”.
Finally, according to information published on the EUMW, cooperation with ENFAST has resulted “year by year in the arrest of approximately 400 serious criminals”.
Sharing information across borders with SIENA
A major part of how law enforcement agencies and units (such as ENFAST) in EU member states share restricted and/or sensitive data such as strategic crime-related intelligence with Europol and the partners with whom it cooperates is through the Secure Information Exchange Network Application (SIENA), which launched in July 2009 and is set to become the default system for securely sharing information between Schengen area associated countries and EU member states.
Key takeaways
In the ten years since its launch, the Europol-backed and ENFAST-maintained EU’s Most Wanted website has resulted in hundreds of arrests and is backed by a continually improving criminal information sharing system that helps European law enforcement agencies more easily locate and arrest wanted fugitives.
