La Strada International has published a new comparative study, “Advancing Access to Compensation for Victims of Human Trafficking“.
Over the years, the European Union developped various legal frameworks to regulate and strengthen access to compensation for victims of labour exploitation and human trafficking. Yet, receiving compensation in practice remains extremely rare. The report examines how EU legislation adopted in 2024, particularly the CSDDD, the Forced Labour Regulation and the Asset Recovery and Confiscation Directive, alongside earlier legal instruments, may enhance access to compensation, with a focus on France, Germany, and Spain.
Human trafficking is one of the gravest human rights violations. Ensuring trafficked persons are identified, protected during proceedings, and supported to access justice, including compensation, must be a priority.
Yet, while the right to compensation is recognised in international and European frameworks, receiving compensation in practice remains extremely rare. Through the Justice at Last project consortium coordinated by La Strada International, we concluded that only two thirds of claims resulted in an award. Worryingly, only a quarter of them received the awarded compensation amount.
While these measures create important new opportunities for corporate accountability, asset recovery, and victim remediation, our research shows that access to compensation remains fragmented and difficult to realise in practice. Victims continue to face significant barriers: lack of information, fear of retaliation, complex procedures, weak enforcement of compensation orders, and limited asset recovery.
It also becomes clear that several important areas remain insufficiently regulated at EU level. In particular, the adopted legislation does not introduce stronger binding obligations concerning advance payments, state compensation funds or the systematic consideration of compensation within criminal proceedings. Although Member States may go beyond existing EU requirements, there are currently limited incentives for them to do so.
Moreover, recent political compromises, including the Omnibus revisions to the CSDDD, have weakened several mechanisms originally intended to improve access to justice and corporate liability.
The findings and recommendations presented in this paper are based on desk research, interviews, and an online focus group session conducted in 2025.
Recommendations
We call on Member States to:
Ensure victims have effective access to compensation from offenders and/or the state, and that accessible and functioning compensation mechanisms are in place in practice.
Ensure that trafficked persons and victims of forced labour receive timely, clear and language-appropriate information on their rights, including compensation and reporting options, alongside safe reporting channels and adequate practical and psychosocial support.
Strengthen the assessment, calculation and delivery of compensation by training legal professionals, developing clear and consistent damage assessment standards, enabling courts to award compensation ex officio, and ensuring state advance payment schemes where offenders fail to pay.
Improve early-stage financial investigations and asset recovery in criminal proceedings to identify, trace and confiscate proceeds of crime, and ensure that recovered assets are effectively directed towards victim compensation.
Enhance cross-border cooperation through training, exchange of best practice, specialised support services for transnational cases, and stronger partnerships between NGOs and trade unions, ensuring that victims have access to compensation across borders.
Strengthen monitoring, data collection and accountability mechanisms in human trafficking and corporate exploitation cases, including data on compensation claims, awards, enforcement outcomes, use of compensation funds, and the impact on victims.
A continued work towards acess to compensation
Since 2008, La Strada International has actively monitored and addressed the need to improve access to compensation for victims of human trafficking and related crimes. Two EU-funded projects, COMP.ACT (2009–2012) and Justice at Last (2017–2019), were implemented, comprising European research, capacity building, awareness-raising, exchange of practice, and advocacy aimed at strengthening access to compensation. In the years following these projects, La Strada International continued to raise awareness of the issue, make use of strategic opportunities to highlight gaps and challenges in practice, contribute to training initiatives for relevant stakeholders, and support the exchange of expertise at European level. These efforts have sought not only to improve the practical application of the right to compensation, but also to strengthen legal and policy provisions at both national and European level in order to secure more effective access to compensation for victims.