Europol, the new EU crime-liaison organisation based in The Hague, has already been involved in 2,000 drugs investigations including more than 100 operations in which "controlled deliveries" of drugs were carried out to capture traffickers, a conference on policing in Malahide was told yesterday.
The director of Europol, Mr Yurgen Storbeck, told the conference there was now a need for greater co-operation, particularly on judicial terms, among EU states, to combat the increasing threat from organised crime.
He proposed that there should be a European prosecutor's office to supervise international crime investigations. Parallel with this would be the mutual recognition of each state's legal procedures. He said several major investigations had been potentially compromised by differences in laws and rules of evidence.
Mr Storbeck said: "As organised crime becomes more sophisticated, we have to adopt new approaches. Removal of border controls does not have to mean less security, but other measures are needed.
"There has to be less in-fighting between agencies. On the contrary, we should seek to adopt a multi-agency, inter-disciplinary approach, seeking to foster both a national and an international team spirit.
"While criminals are free to operate across the European Union, restrictions and border controls still exist for law enforcement agencies. They have to work in a framework of 15 or more different legal systems, and 11 languages, often with little or no mutual understanding of the practical and legal differences involved.
"Yet maintaining internal security has become a task too complex for any state to provide on its own. It requires intensive international co-operation among police, customs, border guards and judicial authorities.
"But co-operation means sharing and being prepared to give up something for a wider interest. One day it might be a piece of information, another day it might be the urge to act unilaterally against a minor criminal when holding back could lead to the capture of a more important one in another country.
"And that idea clashes headlong with the concept of national sovereignty and the public perception of the dangers of foreign interference in the affairs of the state."