Mexico City, Mexico – Members of the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation say Mexican drug cartels have been detected in Europe. The law enforcement agency says that although it has not found large quantities of fentanyl, it knows that Mexican cartels are responsible for its production.
“We are concerned about fentanyl. We still don’t see large quantities of it in Europe, but we are concerned because we know that these Mexican cartels are responsible for the production of fentanyl for North America,” said Catherine De Bolle, executive director of the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol).
De Bolle’s comments were part of a Europol presentation on a report on the expansion of drug trafficking. The amounts of cocaine seized in European ports “have never been higher than in the past four years,” De Bolle said in linking the use of fentanyl to cocaine. She says Europe “faces a growing threat of a more diverse and dynamic drug market”.
Alexis Goosdeel, director of the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, said that “since the opening of peace negotiations with the FARC and the Colombian government (…), we have seen a dramatic increase in the production of cocaine in Colombia”, adding that “there has been an improvement in chemical processing” as well as the volume of drugs produced.
“Repeatedly, tonnes of methamphetamine produced in South America have been seized in the European Union. In most cases, it came from Mexico,” De Bolle explained.
“The reality we all know is that the EU is not just a destination area for drug trafficking. It is also an important region of origin and a region of transit,” added De Bolle during their video press conference.
From 2010 to 2020, they said there had been a 477% increase in methamphetamine seizures in Europe.
“Repeatedly, tonnes of methamphetamine produced in the Americas have been seized in the EU, and most of the time it came from Mexico. A worrying trend we are seeing are specialty chemists operating in the Americas who have also been active in the European Union over the past year,” De Bolle explained.
According to the report prepared by Europol and the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Mexican cartels operate with European Union criminal groups to produce methamphetamine and cocaine, two drugs commonly mixed with fentanyl by users.
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