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On 30 January, a long-standing European blind spot was abruptly illuminated. In a report grounded in Western security and intelligence assessments, The Telegraph drew attention to a phenomenon that can no longer be confined to the domains of criminal justice or public health. The large-scale trafficking of synthetic drugs into Europe, sustained by chemical precursors manufactured in China, was framed as a potential form of hybrid pressure, operating below the threshold of open confrontation.
This was neither an indictment nor a political declaration. It was a shift in analytical posture: the recognition that a phenomenon traditionally classified as criminal may, in fact, generate strategic consequences. From this angle, European security appears far broader than the conventional focus on military capabilities, energy infrastructure, or critical undersea assets.
When crime reshapes the security debate
The significance of the Telegraph investigation lies less in the data it presents than in the interpretative lens it adopts. The article does not reveal unknown trends in drug consumption. Instead, it connects the availability of inexpensive synthetic substances—produced through global supply chains that are largely lawful—to a series of cumulative effects: the consolidation of organised crime, mounting strain on healthcare systems, the gradual weakening of social cohesion, and the growing durability of criminal networks able to corrupt and embed themselves within legal economies.
The question, therefore, is not whether there is demonstrable hostile intent on the part of Beijing. The central issue is more pragmatic: the impact produced. In strategic affairs, outcomes often outweigh motives.
The grey zone dimension
Analytical clarity is further provided by the work of the 3GIMBALS think tank. Rather than offering investigative reporting, the study situates the drug economy within the conceptual framework of grey-zone activity—a space between peace and conflict where pressure accumulates incrementally and attribution remains elusive.
Chemical precursors exemplify this ambiguity. Essential to legitimate pharmaceutical and industrial processes, they are also easily diverted. European criminal organisations have proven adept at exploiting this ambiguity, continually modifying compounds, relocating production sites, adjusting trafficking routes, and leveraging ports, rail corridors, advanced logistics, and the openness of the single market.
What emerges is a form of criminality that is no longer episodic or localised. It is cross-border, industrial in scale, and structurally resilient. Addressing it solely through traditional law-enforcement tools risks underestimating its strategic significance.
The European institutional response
It would be misleading to suggest that European institutions are unaware of these dynamics. Official EU documents reveal sustained engagement, albeit through a different conceptual lens.
On 23 April 2024, Brussels hosted the third EU–China dialogue on drugs policy, coordinated by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs. Synthetic drugs, new psychoactive substances, and chemical precursors featured prominently on the agenda. Initiated in 2021, this dialogue confirms that the issue is recognised at both technical and diplomatic levels.
The EU Drugs Strategy 2021–2025 further underscores this awareness. Its language is explicitly security-oriented, emphasising supply-side disruption, the fight against organised crime, border management, and the misuse of legitimate trade channels. Agencies such as Europol and the EMCDDA are positioned as central nodes in a framework that integrates internal security, judicial cooperation, and external engagement.
Governance versus security logic
Yet a fundamental divergence remains.
Where sections of Western strategic analysis increasingly interpret synthetic drug trafficking as an instrument of hybrid pressure, the European Union continues to approach it primarily as a challenge of governance—one to be managed through regulation, cooperation, and multilateral mechanisms.
This approach is coherent and legally grounded. However, it entails a structural risk: fragmentation. Health policy, customs oversight, policing, and diplomatic dialogue are addressed in parallel rather than as components of a single strategic threat assessment.
In an international environment shaped by systemic competition, this asymmetry matters. While some actors operate through indirect, deniable vectors of influence, Europe relies on responses that are often incremental, compartmentalised, and reactive.
A structural vulnerability
The synthetic drugs economy exposes deeper European fragilities: dependence on global production networks that defy easy supervision, overlapping and fragmented competences among Member States, the persistent tension between the freedoms of the single market and security imperatives, and the unintended use of the Schengen area as an efficiency multiplier for transnational crime.
In this context, organised crime ceases to be merely an illicit enterprise. It becomes a strategic amplifier, capable of intensifying instability, violence, and institutional mistrust.
The implication is uncomfortable but unavoidable. In contemporary Europe, security threats do not always arrive as overt acts of aggression. They may manifest as gradual erosion, diffuse pressure, and the silent normalisation of disorder.
Acknowledging this reality does not imply abandoning cooperation or embracing alarmism. It requires, instead, analytical realism—the ability to apply categories that reflect the nature of the challenge.
European security today is not defined by ideology.
It is defined by clarity of judgment.