On Tuesday 4 March in Brussels, the interior ministers of the EU Member States and their counterparts from the Latin American Committee for Internal Security (EU-CLASI Joint Declaration) approved a draft joint declaration on strengthening security cooperation in the two regions and tackling criminal networks “that undermine the rule of law, infiltrate the legal economy, State institutions and public administrations, and launder money to conceal their profits”, reads the text.
They commit to “focusing and increasing joint efforts to combat drug trafficking and disrupt high-risk criminal networks, in particular by following the money while also pursuing the work in other key priority crime areas such as the trafficking in human beings, the smuggling of migrants, the design, manufacture and illicit trafficking of firearms, child sexual abuse, cyber, environmental and financial crimes, corruption, organised property crime, trafficking in cultural goods and the criminal use of cryptocurrencies”.
They also want to cooperate “to address and disrupt new drug trafficking routes collaboratively from the source, through transit to destination countries, including those via the Gulf of Guinea and Central America and the Caribbean, while intensifying efforts against traditional trafficking routes, ensuring a broad geographical approach to combating the multifaceted challenges of organised crime”.
The ministers also adopted a new EU-CLASI 2025-2026 roadmap on operational cooperation priorities.
The joint declaration stresses: - strengthening the use of channels and systems for exchanging information between law enforcement agencies in the two regions, guaranteeing respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, the protection of personal data and confidentiality; - strengthening the exchange of information on drug trafficking, with the support of the European Union Drugs Agency and Europol.
It will also involve developing actions against the most threatening criminal networks involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking, migrant smuggling, the sexual exploitation of children and firearms trafficking.
Link to the joint declaration and roadmap: https://aeur.eu/f/fqd (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)