The case study "Traf­fick­ing of Goods" was led by the Max Planck In­sti­tute. The il­li­cit mar­kets in the case study in­cluded the fol­low­ing products: al­co­hol, ci­gar­ettes, drugs (heroin, can­nabis, and ec­stasy), works of art/an­tiques, product pir­acy, and coun­ter­feit medi­cine.

The free move­ment of goods, in­clud­ing the re­lated pro­mo­tion of in­tra-com­munity trade and the ab­ol­i­tion of cus­toms tar­iffs, is one of the EU´s most im­port­ant freedoms. However, an in­crease in the traf­fick­ing of goods is seen as a dir­ect con­sequence of this more in­teg­rated and mo­bile EU. Tack­ling the traf­fick­ing of goods is a ma­jor chal­lenge for policy makers, law en­force­ment agen­cies, and (leg­al) product man­u­fac­tures, be­cause the traf­fick­ing of goods can cause enorm­ous dam­ages, in­clud­ing lost tax rev­en­ue, dis­tor­tion of com­pet­i­tion, loss of in­come (on the leg­al job mar­ket), and dangers to people´s health (due to the con­sump­tion of il­li­cit drugs or coun­ter­feit medi­cine). An­oth­er prob­lem is the wide­spread ac­cept­ance of sev­er­al il­li­cit mar­kets (for ex­ample, to­bacco and product pir­acy) and, there­with, a miss­ing sense of guilt for a threat to the rule of law. Against this back­drop, the FI­DU­CIA pro­ject ques­tioned wheth­er a strength­en­ing of con­trol activ­it­ies was really able to reg­u­late the in­form­al eco­nomy or wheth­er pub­lic ac­cept­ance of leg­al rules and the le­git­im­acy of ju­di­cial in­sti­tu­tions could lead to im­proved com­pli­ance.

The case study ex­plored the leg­al, crim­in­o­lo­gic­al, and so­ci­olo­gic­al as­pects that sur­round the traf­fick­ing of goods. The scale of il­li­cit mar­kets was de­scribed with the aid of stat­ist­ic­al data. There­after, polit­ic­al, prac­tic­al, and leg­al meas­ures to pre­vent the traf­fick­ing of goods, as well as the struc­ture of il­li­cit mar­kets and pub­lic at­ti­tudes to­wards them, were ana­lyzed. Fi­nally, con­clu­sions are provided as to wheth­er crim­in­al policy should be changed.

A stat­ist­ic­al sum­mary on the traf­fick­ing of goods had been de­signed to or­gan­ize the broad range of stat­ist­ics avail­able at a na­tion­al and supra­na­tion­al level. Vari­ous tech­niques for as­sess­ing the scale of il­li­cit mar­kets were used, in­clud­ing ex­tra­pol­a­tions from seizure stat­ist­ics and "mir­ror stat­ist­ics" (com­par­ing es­tim­ates of il­li­cit com­mer­cial activ­ity with stat­ist­ics on le­git­im­ate com­mer­cial activ­ity). Stat­ist­ics were gathered from pub­licly avail­able sources, such as gov­ern­ment branches and com­mer­cial in­dus­tries dir­ectly af­fected by the traf­fick­ing of goods.

To de­scribe the dy­nam­ics of il­li­cit mar­kets as well as the play­ers in­volved (pro­du­cers, traf­fick­ers, con­sumers), a qual­it­at­ive con­tent ana­lys­is of leg­al doc­u­ments and in­ter­views with ex­perts had been chosen. Pub­lic at­ti­tudes to­wards the traf­fick­ing of goods and people's jus­ti­fic­a­tion in con­nec­tion with smug­gling goods were ex­amined through a sec­ond­ary ana­lys­is.