Western Europe to target ports in new crime fight plan

Justice ministers of six western European countries vowed Friday to make security at entry points like harbours a top priority, with drug trafficking reaching alarming numbers on the continent.

Speaking after an anti-crime ministers’ conference in Amsterdam, Dutch Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius said the governments’ top security officials also agreed to strengthen ties with Latin-American partners in an effort to stem organised crime, particularly the cocaine trade.

“We have agreed to create a platform in which we plan to share much more information between us, specifically targeted at protecting our ports and airports,” she told journalists.

“These include important harbours like Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Hamburg,” Yesilgoz-Zegerius said.

Countries will now work a lot closer to make it easier to track vessel movements for instance, while doing more to screen containers and exposing financial flows stemming from organised crime, the Dutch minister said.

Internationally, western European countries are also beefing up cooperation with Latin American countries including Colombia and Peru — two major source countries in the cocaine trade.

The ministers agreed to set up a dedicated task force with Bogota and Lima to tackle the cocaine trade at its source, Yesilgoz-Zegerius said.

Friday’s meeting in the Dutch capital is the second between ministers to discuss Europe’s growing drug wave since December last year. The group will meet next year in Antwerp to report progress.

Germany and Italy are the two latest editions to the coalition which also includes Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Spain.

An EU report in May said record levels of cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking were sparking violence across the continent and the market was growing.

In 2020, a record 214.6 tonnes of cocaine was seized in the EU, Norway and Turkey, the fourth consecutive annual record haul, according to the report by Europol and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA.

The Netherlands has seen several high-profile deaths linked to cocaine gangs in the country, particularly in Amsterdam.

This included the country’s best-known crime reporter Peter R. de Vries who was gunned down in a street in the Dutch capital in July last year.

Prosecutor say his assassination was linked to his role in the trial of a Dutch drugs mafia kingpin.