THE European Union launches today in Antwerpits central entry point cocaine on the European continent, the “Alliance of Ports» with the aim of harmonizing security measures against the trade of drugs and dealing with the spread of criminal networks in port structures.

The European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, will participate together with the Belgian Minister of the Interior, Analise Verlinden, in the launch of this partnership in the presence of the authorities of sixteen main European container ports and representatives of associations of maritime transport companies.

Major ports are the target of local organized crime networks, who do not hesitate to bribe dock workers, port agents and truck drivers, customs and police to make room for steamboats to pick up drugs from containers.

Cocaine, which comes from Latin America, is flooding the European market: in the port of Antwerp seizures reached a record level of 116 tons in 2023. And the Flemish city is shaken by violence between gangs fighting over a trade that yields colossal income.

In the European Union, 70% of drug seizures by customs authorities are made at ports.

Flow mapping

“We need more cooperation, not only with the police and customs authorities, but also with private port operators,” says the European commissioner.

In the framework of the Ports Alliance, participants will exchange information and good practices, they will map the flows and they will dismantle criminal networks.

Apart from drug shipments arriving at major ports in northern Europe, an alternative way is to transport the drugs to west or north Africa, where they are loaded onto smaller vessels bound for (southern European) ports, mainly in Spain, according to Ilva Johansson.

Worry about fentanyl

In addition to cocaine, authorities are also concerned about the increase in synthetic drug trafficking.

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who will be in Antwerp today with his European counterparts, emphasized that these drugs (amphetamines, ecstasy, MDMA…) are creating a new European criminal network, which requires a common strategy, “mainly to prevent the arrival of fentanyl in Europe”.

This synthetic opiate, made with ingredients often sourced from China, is responsible for tens of thousands of overdoses each year in the United States, where it is imported by Mexican cartels.

If the presence of fentanyl in Europe is “at a very low level”, Ylva Johansson emphasizes that many synthetic drugs are produced in the European Union, which is a net exporter to the rest of the world.

“Every year we dismantle 400 laboratories and that worries me,” says the European commissioner, explaining that the traffickers present in Europe have obtained from the Mexican cartels the modum operandi to manufacture fentanyl.