Half the drugs-related criminals arrested in Antwerp come from the Netherlands, the head of the city’s public prosecution department has told the NRC in an interview. 

“Some 50% of the 150 people we picked up in the port last year were from the Netherlands,” Franky De Keyzer told the paper. “It has been like that for years.”

In addition, of the 151 people arrested for violent drugs-related crimes last year, 69 were Dutch, he said. In 2022, Dutch nationals accounted for 47 of the 95 arrests.

“Rotterdam and Antwerp ports are just 75 kilometres apart,” De Keyzer said. “That makes it one area for drugs criminals.

“In an ideal world we would work with mixed teams from the police and justice departments,” he told the paper. “Criminal organisations can move smoothly through Europe because there are no borders and we should be removing more boundaries when it comes to detective work.”

Last week, five Dutch teenagers were arrested in the port itself where they were thought to be looking for a consignment of cocaine. Two of them were just 14. Two people in the Netherlands have also been arrested in connection with a drugs-related shooting in Antwerp, which resulted in the death of an 11-year-old girl. 

Antwerp and Rotterdam ports have a key role in the cocaine trade. Last year 121 tonnes of cocaine was seized in the Belgian city and most of that would have been traded on through the Netherlands, experts say.