Debate: Combating organised crime in the EU
Date: WEDNESDAY, 15 MARCH 2023
Speaker: Helena Dalli
Language: EN

Not long ago, we discussed terrorism, and rightly so. Organised crime is a big threat to society, as is terrorism. When criminals kill lawyers, journalists and threaten politicians, they attack the heart of our democracies. When criminals kill our children, like 11-year-old Firdaous in Antwerp, they attack us in the heart. She was the innocent victim in a drugs war. Sixty per cent of criminal groups use corruption to buy people, buy politicians and buy power and to cross borders, infiltrate airports and harbours. Criminals use violence to intimidate, torture, murder. Criminals undermine the economy. Eighty per cent of crime groups infiltrate the legal economy, investing in construction, restaurants and hotels, but also food, flowers and oil; buying properties and luxury goods to launder money; building up a parallel underground financial system. One hundred and eighty nationalities are involved in organised crime in the EU. Seventy per cent of crime groups are active in more than three Member States. They are increasingly sophisticated, operating like multinational corporations with global supply lines in a global, organised network.  It takes a network to fight a network. If criminals work together, police must work better together, like last November, when Operation Desert Light brought down a ‘super cartel’ responsible for 30% of cocaine distribution in the EU. Supported by Europol, police from Spain, France and Belgium, the Netherlands and United Arab Emirates arrested nearly 50 suspects and captured 30 tonnes of cocaine. We want more success stories like these. Police work together in EMPACT, the EU policy cycle against criminal threats. We proposed the first-ever strategies against organised crime and trafficking of human beings. We also proposed action plans against firearms and drugs, and police cooperation and information exchange is at the heart of all of them. We’ve adopted the police cooperation package, including the recommendation on operational cooperation and the Directive on police information exchange. We’re updating the Prüm framework to make police information exchange more efficient. We’ve boosted the mandate of Europol, so Europol can work with private parties and third countries. And we clarified that Europol can process big data and develop artificial intelligence because no one can process one billion messages by hand. That’s how many messages police captured in the Sky ECC case alone, when they gained access to criminal encrypted communication with spectacular results. The Sky ECC and EncroChat and ANOM cases together sparked more than 7 000 operations, over 10 000 arrests, 500 tonnes of drugs captured and nearly EUR 1 billion in criminal cash. Criminals are going dark, using encryption and other tools to hide their crimes. Police lag behind and we have fewer possibilities to enforce the law online than offline. But almost all crimes today have an online component, not only organised crimes. Police must have the legal and technical means to fight these crimes while fully upholding fundamental rights. We need to go after criminal money. Now 99% remains in criminal hands. Only 1% is being confiscated. We have proposed a new law to freeze and seize assets before they slip across the borders, targeting the top criminal bosses by including confiscation of unexplained wealth. And soon we will propose a new law to criminalise all forms of corruption with unified definitions and harmonised penalties across the European Union. Drug trafficking is the most profitable and most violent crime. Killings, shootings, bombings, arson, kidnapping, torture are sparked by gangland warfare over drugs. There is no such thing as fair-trade cocaine. My colleague Ylva Johansson told me how in Colombia she saw from a helicopter the gaps made in the rainforest for growing coca leaves, polluting the environment with chemicals. And she met villagers in the very same room where criminals murdered their mayor because he dared to cultivate sustainable crops rather than coca. In our streets and cities, the violence and corruption is local, but the drug trade is intercontinental. This is why we agreed with Colombia to improve security of ports on both sides of the Atlantic and set up our intercontinental police cooperation. Here in the EU, we’ve made the fight against drugs the focus of a Schengen evaluation. This year, at the mid-term point of the organised crime and drug strategies, we’ll assess progress and present new actions to fight organised crime and the drug trafficking.  It takes a network to fight a network. If criminals work together across borders, across continents, we must work together better. If criminals organise, we must organise better. That’s at the heart of everything that we do.