MILAN: Criminal organizations made as much as €6 billion ($7 billion) smuggling migrants into Europe last year, as 90% of those reaching the Continent used smugglers, said Rob Wainwright, the head of Europe’s police agency Europol.
The surge in migrants to Europe last year led to a higher involvement of criminal networks in illegal immigration, making this the fastest-growing criminal sector, he said.
“We’re very concerned about the possible connections between terrorist organizations and smugglers’ networks,” Mr. Wainwright told a parliamentary hearing in Rome on Wednesday.
Last year, more than a million people arrived in Europe, mostly from war-torn Syria and Libya.
More than 184,000 migrants have reached the Continent this year, mainly through Greece and Italy, according to the United Nation’s refugee agency, although a European Union deal with Turkey has curbed the number of arrivals via the Turkey-Greece route.
As a result of the deal, arrivals to Greece dropped, but many migrants and refugees are still making the more dangerous Libya-to-Italy journey.
In February, Europol launched the European center against trafficking of migrants, “to strengthen our ability to act in this sector,” Mr. Wainwright said.
He added that Europol has developed a database with information related to about 40,000 people who are involved in migrant trafficking, while the agency’s officers have been sent to migrants’ centers in Italy and Greece—the so-called hot spots—to “cooperate with national authorities.”
Mr. Wainwright also said terrorist threats are still at a very high level, adding that the agency is working on several possible leads but has “no information on specific threats to Italy.”
