European living involved having to perform crime (9)
I believe the answer is:
evildoing
'crime' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'european living involved having to perform' is the wordplay.
'european' becomes 'E' (abbreviation e.g. EU).
'involved' is an anagram indicator (involved can mean confusing or complex).
'having' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'to perform' becomes 'do' (both can mean complete an action).
'living' with letters rearranged gives 'viling'.
'viling' enclosing 'do' is 'vildoing'.
'e'+'vildoing'='EVILDOING'
(Other definitions for evildoing that I've seen before include "it's wrong" , "Maleficent" .)