At a time when drug seizures in the EU have increased sixfold in more than ten years for cocaine alone, the European Commission proposed on Thursday 4 December, in its new EU Drugs Strategy and an Action Plan against drug trafficking to strengthen the European Ports Alliance, launched at the beginning of 2024, to strengthen partnerships with third countries, particularly in Latin America, to prevent these drugs from reaching the EU, and to strengthen the resources of Europol and even Frontex to combat trafficking.
Cocaine remains the most frequently smuggled drug into Europe. In 2023, seizures reached 419 tonnes via smaller and more vulnerable ports, in addition to the main entry points.
Synthetic drugs represent another challenge for the EU. Every year, the police dismantle 500 clandestine drug production laboratories, explains the Commission. Synthetic precursors, chemical substances with no known legal use, are smuggled into the EU by organised crime. They present health risks, but also generate hazardous toxic waste.
Monitoring terrorist financing. The EU Drugs Strategy therefore aims to strengthen preparedness and response to drug-related threats through improved data collection, surveillance, early warning and rapid reaction measures at European and national levels, building on the new tasks of the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA), which can issue early warnings.
In 2026, the Commission will assess the need for stricter legislative rules against organised crime, possibly by revising the existing framework decision on drug trafficking. It will prepare a new European strategy for ports, focusing on port security, and will again assess the “the feasibility of a new EU-wide system to track terrorist financing (and) to respond to the organised crime threat, it will expand the assessment to also cover organised crime profits”, although the Commission has already tried to set up such a system in the past – without success. One of the aims was to extend the model of the so-called SWIFT programme between the EU and the US, which aims to study banking transactions and their links with terrorism.
Actions also include strengthening public-private cooperation to improve the detection of drugs smuggled into the EU by postal and parcel delivery services.
Special maritime operations stepped up. On the operational side, EU law enforcement agencies will be asked to increase surveillance of the routes and methods used by criminal networks; Frontex and Europol will make resources available to Member States to detect drug trafficking at external borders, including to combat the misuse of speedboats. The operations of the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre – Narcotics (MAOC-N) will also be extended to disrupt drug trafficking by sea, the Commission adds.
MAOC-N is a multinational coordination platform bringing together liaison officers from law enforcement, customs, armed forces and maritime authorities from participating EU Member States, the UK and observer partners, including the US. MAOC-N is particularly active in the Atlantic Ocean, notably on the transatlantic routes to Europe and off the coast of West Africa, an area increasingly used as a hub for the transhipment of drugs to Europe, the document explains.
Research will also be encouraged to develop new cutting-edge technologies for detecting drugs.
Further information: https://aeur.eu/f/jua; https://aeur.eu/f/jub (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)