Croatia pushes EU policing gaps

In Antwerp, cocaine used to leave the port with a PIN code. A dock worker, a corrupt logistics contact, a six-digit number, and a container could be released from one of Europe’s busiest ports as if nothing unusual had happened. Belgian customs and the Port of Antwerp-Bruges later replaced that system with a secured digital release process. But the weakness was never only Antwerp’s. Customs, police, port operators and Europol each had part of the picture, while the law and the working habits of national agencies did not let them join it quickly enough.

For Malta, this is not a distant northern port story. An island economy built around trade, Freeport logistics, financial services and travel depends on systems that can distinguish legitimate movement from criminal networks without treating everyone as a suspect. That is the line Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic is now asking the EU to redraw. He wants member states to feed more data into Europol and Schengen systems, and to use border tools such as the Entry/Exit System, which records when non-EU travellers cross the EU’s external border, and ETIAS, the pre-travel screening system for visa-exempt visitors (Avaz). He is not proposing a new European police database. He is pushing governments to make fuller, tougher use of the ones already there. No published legislative draft has accompanied the move.

What Antwerp Proves

Belgium gives the argument its hard evidence. Europol has warned that criminal networks infiltrate major European seaports through corrupt workers and logistics facilitators. They target people and access points more than cargo itself. Belgian authorities reportedly seized 55 tonnes of cocaine last year, while officials accept that larger volumes still pass through undetected (Brussels Times). Belgian customs say Antwerp seizures fell by nearly 70% in the first half of 2026, but that only tells us what was caught. It does not tell us what moved through.

That distinction matters in Malta too. A smaller port or airport can look controlled on paper because seizures are limited, while the more important question is whether agencies are seeing the same risk picture. In a micro-state, where the same commercial, political and regulatory circles often overlap, information gaps are rarely just technical. They can become governance gaps.

The European Ports Alliance, launched in January 2024 as a public-private partnership between member states, port operators and EU agencies, is the Commission’s main answer (European Commission, Council of the EU). The logic is straightforward. If tighter controls in Antwerp push traffickers to Rotterdam or Piraeus, national action simply moves the route. It does not break the business. Switzerland joined the alliance for the same reason: drug logistics do not stop at EU borders (Tio.ch).

The Machinery Exists. National Governments Hold the Keys.

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

These systems can already connect at a technical level. The harder boundary is legal. Each database has rules on who may use the data, for what purpose, and under what safeguards. A border database cannot simply be turned into a general police dragnet because it would be convenient (Interoperability Regulation).

So the bottleneck is not mainly missing technology. It is national discretion. Police, customs and border agencies decide what enters these systems, how quickly it is uploaded, and how complete it is. Bozinovic’s real target is the space between the EU security machinery that exists and the uneven way governments use it.

For Malta, that raises an uncomfortable but familiar question: who is strong enough to police the gatekeepers? The same country that relies on EU databases to protect Schengen membership and cross-border business also knows how easily institutional checks can weaken when decisions sit inside small circles. Faster data-sharing may help enforcement. It also makes accountability more urgent.

Germany Shows Why "Share More" Hits a Wall

Germany shows why closing the gap is not as simple as telling governments to upload more. Berlin is pushing a federal police reform that would introduce AI-supported real-time facial recognition at railway stations, airports and border zones (DW). German digital-rights groups have linked these 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 wider national use is likely to end up in court (T-Online).

Germany’s hesitation is not about Europol or SIS as such. It is about the national police files, biometric tools and surveillance systems that feed European cooperation. Once governments expand facial matching and AI analysis at home, then plug those results into cross-border channels, the safeguards that make police power answerable start carrying more weight.

That is where Maltese readers should pay attention. Malta has lived through the cost of weak institutions in the most brutal way, after Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination and the public inquiry that found the state bore responsibility. Data systems are not the same as political violence, but the underlying test is familiar: power must be useful enough to protect the public and constrained enough not to become untouchable.

One voice is largely missing from this debate. The people whose data powers these systems barely appear in it. Port workers facing security vetting, travellers recorded by entry and exit systems, suspects flagged by automated matching: they are treated as inputs in an architecture designed by ministries, agencies and technology providers.

Bozinovic is right that criminal networks move across borders faster than police intelligence does. Antwerp shows the price of fragmentation. Germany’s constitutional debate shows the other side of the same problem. Europe is no longer arguing only about how much police data should move across borders. It is arguing about who controls the safeguards once that data starts moving faster.