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Cocaine trafficking in Europe has not decreased. It has simply become less visible...
For years, the story of cocaine trafficking in Europe has been told through the numbers of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg: tons seized, containers inspected, records broken. In 2023, these ports reached historic levels of interceptions. In 2024, volumes seized fell sharply and in 2025 they fell even further. This may seem like good news. But it is not. A new report from the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, based on field research conducted up to February, shows that the decline in seizures in major port hubs does not correspond to any real contraction in the market. Cocaine is in circulation in abundance, wholesale prices are at historic lows and the substance reaching consumers is purer than five years ago. What is changing is the geography and logistics of trafficking.
The first sign is in the way seizures have been transformed. In Antwerp, the number of individual interceptions has increased even as total volumes have fallen: traffickers have stopped focusing on large, consolidated shipments and have switched to shipments weighing less than 100 kilograms, which are harder to detect and less costly to lose. It is a logic of calculated losses: not protecting each individual shipment, but ensuring the continuity of the overall flow. Prices confirm that this strategy is working. In Belgium and the Netherlands, the wholesale price of cocaine fell to around 15,000-16,000 euros per kilogram in 2025, compared to values that exceeded 25,000 euros in previous years. In Spain, the price has reached 12,000-14,000 euros. These are not signs of shortages: they are signs of surpluses.
The second transformation concerns routes. As controls are intensified at northwestern European ports, traffickers are increasingly using the Mediterranean as an alternative entry point. This is not a replacement: Antwerp and Rotterdam remain the main hubs. Rather, it involves a deliberate diversification of risk across multiple entry points.
Morocco has become a major transit hub in the western Mediterranean. In the Strait of Sicily, between southern Sicily and Malta, a different operating model from that of the large container ports is emerging: shipments are dropped off at sea by passing ships and retrieved by smaller vessels operating near the coast. Separating offshore transport from coastal recovery reduces exposure to risk and complicates interception efforts. Investigations on the route between Pozzallo and Malta show how relatively small shipments, sometimes 10-15 kilograms hidden in vehicles, move between the two islands, taking advantage of normal passenger traffic. These movements may seem small, but they represent the final, fragmented stage of much larger maritime shipments. Further west, Portugal recorded its third interception in a year in January of a semi-autonomous submarine loaded with cocaine, this time with nearly nine tons on board, seized 230 nautical miles from the Azores. The crew consisted of three Colombians and one Venezuelan. It shows how high-risk long-distance maritime transport is becoming a structural component of the routes to Europe.
There is a third, perhaps most important structural change. The stages of the supply chain that once took place in Latin America, such as cutting, recrystallization and packaging, are moving to Europe. In the Netherlands, 24 locations linked to cocaine production were discovered in 2024, including extraction, crystallization and packaging laboratories. In Spain, Europol-supported operations dismantled laboratories capable of producing hundreds of kilograms per month. The report also documents the growing presence of Latin American “chefs”, mainly Colombians, working in Dutch and Belgian laboratories, bringing specialized expertise in chemical processing. At the same time, European criminal networks have expanded into producing countries in Latin America and West Africa to secure direct access to the raw material. This bilateral integration makes the supply chain more resilient and harder to target in a single location.
The overall result of these transformations is a market that functions well precisely because it cannot be measured by its traditional indicators. Seizures at major ports may decrease while the availability of cocaine increases. Retail prices remain stable, between 45 and 65 euros per gram in major European cities. But what can be bought for fifty euros has changed: where before it bought almost a gram, it is now 0.6-0.7 grams, but with a purity that in Belgium exceeds 80 percent, compared to 30-40 percent five years ago. For those engaged in drug policy and those who report on it, this poses a methodological problem: seizures remain a necessary tool, but they alone are not sufficient to understand what is happening. Cocaine trafficking in Europe has not decreased. It has simply become less visible./ Adapted from “Pamphlet” by “Linkiesta”
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