Croatia Pushes EU Police Data Drive

In Antwerp, the old trick was almost banal. A dock worker, a compromised logistics contact, a six-digit PIN, and a container of cocaine could leave one of Europe's busiest ports wrapped inside the paperwork of a lawful shipment. Belgian customs and the Port of Antwerp-Bruges later replaced that weakness with a secured digital release process. But the real weakness was never just Antwerp's. Customs had part of the picture. Police had another. Port operators and Europol held further pieces. The law did not give them a quick enough way to join it all together.

Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic is now pushing the EU to close that working gap. He wants member states to put more information into Europol and Schengen systems, and to use border tools such as the Entry/Exit System, which records when non-EU travellers cross external borders, and ETIAS, the pre-travel screening system for visa-exempt visitors (Avaz). This is not, at least for now, a proposal for a new European police database. It is a demand that governments use the machinery already available with far more intent. No published legislative draft has accompanied the push.

What Antwerp Proves

Belgium shows why the issue is no longer theoretical. Europol has warned that criminal networks get inside major European seaports through corrupt workers and logistics facilitators. The target is often not the cargo itself, but the person with access to it. Belgian authorities reportedly seized 55 tonnes of cocaine last year, while officials accept that larger volumes pass through unnoticed (Brussels Times). Belgian customs say Antwerp seizures fell by almost 70% in the first half of 2026, though that tells you what was intercepted, not what escaped detection (21News).

The Commission's main answer is the European Ports Alliance, launched in January 2024 as a public-private partnership between member states, port operators and EU agencies (European Commission, Council of the EU). The logic is straightforward. If Antwerp tightens and traffickers shift to Rotterdam or Piraeus, the problem has not been solved. It has been moved. Switzerland joined the alliance for the same reason: drug logistics do not respect the EU's legal boundary (Tio.ch).

The Machinery Exists. National Governments Hold the Keys.

The EU already has police and border systems capable of doing much of what Bozinovic is asking for. The Schengen Information System, or SIS, is a real-time alert network for wanted people and objects. Prüm II allows national police forces to run automated searches across DNA, fingerprint and facial-image databases held by other member states, with fuller details released only after a match (Prüm II Regulation). Europol can analyse and coordinate, but it cannot order national police forces to act (Europol Regulation).

The systems can already be made to speak to each other in technical terms. The constraint is legal. Each database has rules setting out who can use the information and for what purpose. A border database cannot simply be turned into a general policing net because a government finds that convenient (Interoperability Regulation).

That is where the pressure is landing. The missing piece is not a shiny new platform in Brussels. It is the national decision to upload data, update it quickly, and make it complete enough to matter. Bozinovic's real target is the gap between what the EU's systems can do and what member states actually put into them.

Germany Shows Why "Share More" Hits a Wall

Germany shows why that gap is politically and legally difficult to close. Berlin is pushing a federal police reform that would bring in AI-supported real-time facial recognition at railway stations, airports and border zones (DW). German digital-rights groups have connected the proposals to earlier constitutional challenges, where courts found broad police data-fusion powers disproportionate (Digitalrechte). The EU's AI Act allows real-time biometric identification in public spaces only under narrow law-enforcement exceptions (AI Act), and broad national uses are likely to end up in court (T-Online).

Germany is not objecting to Europol or SIS as such. The problem lies in the national police files and surveillance tools that feed those European channels. If governments expand biometric matching and AI analysis at home, then plug the results into cross-border cooperation, the safeguards around police power start to carry much more weight.

There is a quiet absence in the whole discussion. The people whose data makes the system work rarely appear as political actors. Port workers facing security vetting, travellers logged by entry and exit records, suspects flagged by automated matching: in the design of the system, they are inputs rather than participants in the argument about how it should be governed.

Bozinovic is right about the practical weakness. Criminal networks move across borders faster than police intelligence usually does, and Antwerp shows the cost of that fragmentation. Germany's constitutional fight shows the other half of the problem. Europe is no longer debating only how much police data should move across borders. It is deciding who controls the safeguards when that data begins to move faster.