The European Commission on Monday proposed new rules for more effective and widespread confiscation of funds and other properties from organized crimes and mafias across the European Union.

The new legislative proposal, which still needs to be approved by the EU member states and the European Parliament, aims at establishing an EU-wide system for freezing, managing and confiscating crime-related assets.

It has been planned to streamline existing rules and close loopholes, thus creating a single legal framework for seizing criminal assets, according to Cecilia Malmstrom, the commissioner for home affairs.

"We need to hit criminals where it hurts, by going after the money, and we have to get their profits back into the legal economy, especially in these times of crisis," she said here on Monday.

Law enforcement and judicial authorities needed greater means with which to recover a more significant proportion of criminal assets, she added.

Under the new rules, prosecutors should be allowed to freeze assets as a precautionary measure even before a criminal suspect has been convicted. It will also make it easier to confiscate criminal assets even when the suspect has fled.

According to the commission, the current amounts recovered from organized crimes are modest if compared to the huge revenues generated by illegal activities such as drug trafficking, counterfeiting, human trafficking and small arms smuggling.

Monday's proposal on confiscation is part of a series of measures by the commission seeking to protect the legal economy from criminal infiltration within the EU.