21st National Selection Conference of EYP España · A Coruña 2026
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs II (LIBE II)
Drug trafficking through Europe's seaports keeps growing more sophisticated, from manipulated container codes and bribed port workers to shipments that simply shift toward smaller, less-monitored harbours the moment security tightens. With the EU's response still fragmented and largely port-by-port, how can it build a more coordinated and resilient defence of its seaports against organised drug trafficking?
Start readingSection 01
The scale that makes Europe's ports valuable is the same scale that makes them exploitable — and criminal networks only ever need the weakest link.
Europe's seaports are among the busiest and most strategically important infrastructure in the world, but that same scale makes them among the most vulnerable to criminal exploitation. Criminal networks do not need to break through the most heavily protected port, they only need to find a weaker point somewhere else, and in a network made up of hundreds of ports with different levels of security, resources, and oversight, those weak points will almost always exist.
Success at one port does not necessarily reduce overall drug flows — it often simply redirects them.
Criminologists call this the 'balloon effect': when enforcement tightens in one location, trafficking routes shift to another, meaning that success at one port does not necessarily reduce overall drug flows, it often simply redirects them. The figures bear this out. Between 2019 and mid-2024, more than 1,800 tonnes of illicit drugs were seized in or on their way to EU seaports, cocaine alone accounting for around 82% of the total, with the trend continuing upward. Antwerp and Rotterdam remain major entry points, but criminal groups have shown a remarkable ability to adapt: as controls tighten at major hubs, traffickers increasingly shift toward smaller ports or alternative methods, including semi-submersible vessels designed to evade detection.
The challenge, therefore, is not only how to intercept more drugs, but how to make Europe's port network less vulnerable as a whole. Yet, while ports are deeply connected through trade and logistics, security measures remain largely national, with significant differences in funding, technology and enforcement capacity between Member States, a fragmentation that criminal networks are well-placed to exploit.
Scale of the gap
Every figure below is drawn from the Introduction and the Key Conflicts. The grid is the same arithmetic, made visible: run an inspection sweep and watch how much of the yard you never touch.
100 containers in the yard. Nothing has been opened yet.
At the EU-wide rate, a customs unit facing 100 containers opens two of them. Flagging cargo as high-risk raises that to about ten — but only for the boxes the risk model already suspects.
One container in this grid is carrying a rip-on/rip-off load. Whether you find it is a question of odds, not of effort — and closing those odds is what costs €430 million.
Section 02
Six boxes in the yard. Open each one to read what is inside — you will need all six to follow the debate.
Section 03
Who sits around the table — and who profits from the fact that they do not all answer to the same authority.
The EU's law enforcement agency, supporting Member States' police forces by facilitating intelligence-sharing, coordinating cross-border operations, and helping dismantle the organised crime networks operating through European ports.
EU agencyThe Maritime Analysis and Operation Centre – Narcotics (MAOC-N), based in Lisbon, is an international intelligence-sharing centre that coordinates naval and law enforcement operations against maritime drug trafficking across the Atlantic, connecting several EU Member States with partners such as the UK and the US.
Intelligence · AtlanticThe World Customs Organisation (WCO), together with the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA), monitors and analyses seizure data reported by ports across the EU, publishing joint assessments that have warned about the vulnerability of Europe's port network and the need for greater data-sharing.
Data & assessmentThe European Ports Alliance, launched in January 2024 as the flagship initiative of the EU Roadmap to fight Drug Trafficking and Organised Crime, is a public-private partnership bringing together Member States, port authorities, EU agencies, and private shipping companies to strengthen the resilience of European logistics hubs collectively rather than port-by-port.
Public–private · 16 portsShipping companies and terminal operators are private economic actors who, while not criminals themselves, are frequently exploited as the physical infrastructure through which drugs move, whether knowingly or not. They are increasingly expected to invest in scanning technology, staff vetting, and due diligence.
Private sectorEurojust, the EU's judicial cooperation agency, coordinates prosecution efforts between Member States so that networks operating across borders can be brought to trial rather than exploiting gaps between national legal systems. Its mandate expressly covers drug trafficking: it helps set up Joint Investigation Teams, resolves conflicts of jurisdiction, and facilitates tools like the European Arrest Warrant. In 2025 alone it backed operations such as the arrest of 22 members of a cross-border network moving cocaine worth €175 million.
Judicial cooperationSection 04
Three tensions with no costless answer. Drag each slider to see what a committee actually buys — and pays — at either end.
A container held up for inspection costs money and slows the whole logistics chain, creating pressure to keep controls light. Only a small share of containers passing through a port like Antwerp or Rotterdam can realistically be scanned, with the EU-wide inspection rate sitting at roughly 2%, rising to about 10% for high-risk consignments. The solution seems obvious: inspect more, but the costs are enormous. One EU study estimated that 100% scanning at major ports would require €430 million in infrastructure investment alone, plus over €200 million in annual operating costs. The real conflict is over who pays: shipping companies argue they already bear too much of the financial and legal burden; governments point to the commercial benefits ports generate; and port authorities resist bearing costs that would make them less competitive than ports elsewhere. As long as this question goes unanswered, the inspection gap is unlikely to close.
Ports are still managed nationally, sometimes regionally or municipally, each with its own customs rules, police forces and judicial systems. The EU can propose common frameworks, such as the European Ports Alliance, but it cannot force every Member State to invest the same amount in scanners, staff vetting or anti-corruption measures. The result is a structural asymmetry: criminal networks operating at a continental scale face a patchwork of national responses with different resources and legal frameworks. This fragmentation has practical consequences: customs and law enforcement operate under separate national mandates with different data systems that are rarely interoperable, meaning that criminal organisations can exploit gaps in information exchange and coordination between national and EU authorities even when the political will to cooperate exists. The deeper tension is not just about funding, it is about whether voluntary coordination through non-binding partnerships can ever be sufficient against criminal networks that face no such coordination problems. Some Member States favour stronger EU enforcement mechanisms; others resist any encroachment on national competence over security. Most of the concrete actions still require national implementation and sustained funding, meaning the ambition of EU-level coordination depends entirely on political will that varies considerably across the bloc.
Even record seizures at European ports have not stopped cocaine production from growing. Global cocaine output hit a record 3,708 tonnes in 2023, a 34% jump in a single year, and up to 80% of cocaine reaching Europe now transits through Ecuador, whose ports have seen a near 5,000% increase in cocaine seizures between 2019 and 2024. Better controls have made criminal groups adapt rather than reducing the cocaine supply in Europe, raising a fundamental policy debate: Should Europe's primary investment be in interdiction at the point of entry, or in source-country cooperation aimed at reducing production before it ever reaches European waters? The EU has begun to engage on this front, deepening partnerships with Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, but the results remain limited against the scale of production growth, leaving the question of whether to prioritise enforcement at the border or investment at the source at the heart of any credible European response.
Interactive · the balloon effect
Each node is a European entry point, sized by the share of illicit flow it absorbs. Tighten security on any of them and the share does not disappear — it relocates to whichever harbours are least defended. The total never moves.
Section 05
What already exists, in the order it was built — and what the EU has proposed next.
The Container Control Programme, run jointly by the WCO and UNODC since 2004, has established over 120 Port Control Units across more than 70 countries, training officers to use risk analysis rather than random inspection to identify suspicious containers, resulting in nearly 5,000 seizures of illicit shipments in a single year across participating units.
At EU level, the EU Roadmap to fight Drug Trafficking and Organised Crime, adopted by the European Commission in October 2023, laid out 17 actions across four priority areas: making logistics hubs more resilient, dismantling high-risk criminal networks, reinforcing prevention, and deepening cooperation with international partners.
Its flagship measure, the European Ports Alliance, launched in January 2024 as a public-private partnership, has since expanded to include 16 major ports and, following its one-year review in mid-2025, is now being extended to smaller and inland ports in response to documented displacement of trafficking activity.
MAOC-N coordinates naval interceptions across the Atlantic before shipments even reach European waters, connecting EU Member States with partners including the UK and the US. And EMPACT structures joint operations between Europol, national police forces and customs authorities, targeting the criminal networks behind port infiltration rather than individual shipments.
Looking ahead, the EU's 2025 Drugs Strategy has also proposed a new EU Customs Data Hub that would centralise risk analysis at EU level, allowing suspicious container profiles to be flagged across Member States rather than assessed independently at each port, a direct response to the data fragmentation that criminal networks currently exploit.
Section 06 · Host region
A Coruña sits on the coastline this section is about. Sweep the water below — there is something under the surface, and in early 2025 it took a passer-by, not a system, to find one.
Galicia's coastline, the longest in Spain, has been a favourite entry point for Colombian cartels since the 1980s, first with tobacco and later with cocaine. Back then, the Medellín and Cali cartels spotted the potential of that stretch of coast and the smuggling infrastructure already built by local networks, which led Spain to quickly become the main gateway for Latin American cocaine into Europe.
Decades later, not much has changed. If anything, it's gotten worse. In December 2023, police in the port of Vigo pulled 7.5 tonnes of cocaine out of a shipment of frozen tuna, the largest seizure in the region's history. And 2025 has been even busier, with 11.5 tons seized in just ten months, worth over €800 million and more than all of the previous year combined, with authorities being increasingly worried about semi-submersibles that are getting harder and harder to spot.
What's striking is how reactive the response still is. In early 2025, a passerby noticed a semi-submersible washed up on a beach, and that single discovery unravelled an entire criminal network operating out of the Costa da Morte: 20 arrests, including a Civil Guard officer, and over 1,500 kilos seized. It took a stroke of luck, not a system, to catch them.
Section 07
The reading list is locked in the evidence safe. The combination is in the document you have just read — three figures, in the order the clues give them.
Set the three figures, then turn the handle.
Every answer is stated somewhere above. If you would rather just read the sources, the override is below.
Jury Corner
How to prepare for this committee, from the person who will be listening to you debate it.
“Hey Hey! I'm Aitana (known as Jury Tini <3) your focus juror for LIBE II at A Coruña NSC!”
Quick heads-up before you jump into research mode: this topic is super dynamic and feels straight out of an action movie, but don't panic, you don't need to become an expert on narco-submarines overnight!
Here are a few Tini-Tricks to keep in mind while prepping:
It's easy to think that if Rotterdam or Antwerp seize a record amount of drugs, problem solved! But squeeze one port and the trade just pops up in a smaller, less-monitored harbour (or on a beach in Galicia). Look at the whole European network, not just individual big ports!
Don't waste time learning exact tonnages or every single container count. Focus on the systemic gaps: why inspecting only 2% of containers creates the perfect margin for traffickers, or how methods like "container cloning" exploit the system.
Remember that police, customs, and port security are still largely managed by individual Member States. The real challenge, and where the best debates will happen, is finding how the EU can build a united defence (like the European Ports Alliance) without stepping on national sovereignty.
Keep it practical, don't overcomplicate it, and focus on creative trade-offs between keeping trade fast and ports safe. Can't wait to hear your takes in committee! xoxo
— Aitana BaselgaFocus jury member of the LIBE II committee