COUNTRIES seeking EU membership must show evidence of tackling drug production and trafficking before being admitted, an EU Commissioner has warned.
Speaking at an EU conference on "Women and the Future of Europe" yesterday, the EU Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs, Ms Anita Gradin, said European countries had long worked against opiates being imported, but now it was time for member states to "clean our own house".
There had been an alarming increase in the production and consumption of "fashionable" synthetic drugs such as ecstasy, LSD and amphetamines in Europe, she said, bringing misery to the one million or so addicts, their families and victims of their crimes.
Citing Poland as an example Ms Grad in said the authorities there were closing down two synthetic drug manufacturing laboratories a month. Poland was knocking on the door of EU membership, but first it would have to demonstrate its bona fides.
This would be done by structuring its policy on border patrols, introducing anti drug legislation and ensuring adequate customs controls, a spokeswoman for the Commissioner said later. Other Baltic state applicants, such as Hungary, Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, would have to meet the same criteria, the spokeswoman added.
An opinion poll released at the conference indicated that drug trafficking and organised crime were the main concerns of women in Europe today.
Reiterating the EU's commitment to tackling the drugs problem, the Commissioner praised Ireland's role as President of the EU in putting the drugs issue so high on the agenda.
The Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, and she were working closely together on the issue and the EU Summit in Dublin next month would be presented with a document proposing several initiatives. The Commissioner's spokeswoman said the details of that package were still being finalised, but it would include an initiative on the manufacture of illegal, synthetic drugs.
Combating this aspect of the illegal drugs trade required international co operation, the Commissioner said, as the gangs were highly organised and professional.
The easing of internal European border controls and the collapse of the Iron Curtain had exacerbated the problem. The Convention establishing the European police force, Europol, needed to be urgently ratified she said.
On the illegal trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation, Ms Gradin said this was a more difficult crime to combat as the victims, many of them from Eastern European countries, were scared of the traffickers and of the police. The traffickers were less likely to be, caught and when they were, faced at most a couple, of years in prison, compared to sentences of 10 or more years for drugs offences.
Speaking of the threat to society from organised crime, the Commissioner said "the gangs involved in trafficking women are very often into the drugs trade, car theft, smuggling cigarettes and alcohol and, of course, money laundering" from being to the "best of judicial advice", she added. "They work over the borders and operate in countries where the laws suit their purposes at the moment."