In 2022, 110 metric tons of cocaine were seized at the port of Antwerp, almost half the total amount discovered by European police forces in the same year. Facing this situation, the Belgian authorities were forced to react, so the federal government duly announced an emergency plan at the end of last week by appointing a national drugs commissioner.
Ine Van Wymersch, 42, former public prosecutor of Hal-Vilvoorde, will coordinate the fight against drug trafficking and related crime. She will have to unify the actions of federal, regional and local services, including the city of Antwerp, which has always complained about the inertia of the national authorities. But she will also have to harmonize the activities of the various judicial districts, police zones and provinces involved in surveillance of the port of Antwerp, a vast area of some 120 km².
At the same time as the appointment of Van Wymersch, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced the doubling of the number of port police (to 300 officers) and federal police services in Antwerp. The personnel files of the 16,000 or so port employees will also be reviewed with the help of the intelligence services. In addition, the government intends to acquire intelligent scanners that will enable it to examine 100% of the 400,000 or so containers from Latin America that are unloaded at the port each year – particularly those from Ecuador, Panama and Colombia, where most of the drug shipments come from.
