1 Determining the adequate enforcement of white‐ collar and corporate crimes in Europe Nicholas J Lord, University of Manchester Michael Levi, Cardiff University Forthcoming in J. van Erp, W. Huisman, G. Vande Walle (eds.) European Handbook of White‐Collar and Corporate Crime, Routledge Introduction European nation‐states face domestic, regional and international pressures to respond to some white‐collar and corporate crimes and scandals. For example, (i) (inter)national, non‐ governmental organisations such as Transparency International (TI), Global Witness and Global Financial Integrity in addition to nation‐state specific campaign groups, (ii) supra‐ national regional organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe (CoE) and (iii) international intergovernmental organisations such as the United Nations (UN), Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the (officially informal) Financial Action Task Force (FATF) develop standards, rules and conventions with which nation‐states are morally and politically compelled to sign‐up to and implement in order to respond to those white‐collar and corporate crimes that fall within their remit. Increasingly, to ensure that such agreements are not merely symbolic, they are accompanied by periodic evaluations (Levi and Gilmore, 2002; Halliday et al., 2014). These concerned parties often focus on law enforcement and other control mechanisms as appropriate policy responses which reflects the symbolic and moral nature of criminal justice in tackling national and transnational impunity. However, this creates tensions with national governments where there has traditionally been a preference for regulation (particularly ‘self‐regulation’), persuasion, negotiation and non‐criminal responses to white‐ collar and corporate offenders (Slapper and Tombs, 1999; Wells, 2011; Nelken, 2012; Lord, 2014c). Both self‐regulation and the aversion to criminal prosecution combine ideology with pragmatism, given the huge per‐case costs and evidential difficulties in high‐profile transnational cases. But how do we determine when particular sorts of enforcement or regulatory responses are sufficient and adequate, or how ‘active’ responsible ‘regulators’ are, both in the instant case and taking all enforcement responses together? We can properly assess levels of state and non‐state activity against crimes and their adequacy only in relation to levels and organisation of crime and/or ‘public bads’ (whether or not the latter can be evidenced as crimes). Existing methodologies for reviewing the latter are under‐developed. In light of this, relative to what variables are levels of enforcement and (self‐)regulation understood? How can we develop an appropriate ‘threshold’, against which levels of enforcement and (self‐