Narco-state Europe: How continent is being terrorised by growing drugs mafia as French mayor is forced into hiding, influencer is threatened and Belgium becomes smuggling hub

By ELIANA SILVER, SENIOR FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER Published: 12:53, 25 July 2026 | Updated: 13:16, 25 July 2026 Drug mafias are tightening their grip on Europe, terrorising communities, threatening public officials and transforming Belgium into a major gateway for cannabis flowing into the continent. A mayor in southern France was whisked from his home overnight on Tuesday and placed in police protection ​after authorities got wind of a potential attack against him ‌by the country's top drug gang, the DZ Mafia. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said he decided ​to remove the mayor of Alès Christophe Rivenq after credible intelligence suggested an attack ​was imminent. Originating in Marseille, about 160 kilometres south of Alès, the fast-growing DZ Mafia has morphed from a local player into ​one of France's main security threats due to its domination of ​the drug trade. Rivenq had already been threatened earlier this month, when 9mm bullets were found in his mailbox along with threatening graffiti on the walls of his home, France's National Prosecutor's Office for the ​Fight Against Organized ​Crime (PNACO) said. 'I've never received threats on this level,' Rivenq, 60, said in a statement. 'This shows that the actions we're taking against DZ and drug trafficking are paying off. I will not be intimidated.' And on Thursday in Marseille, reality TV star and influencer Carla Moreau, 29, received a threatening letter from the drug gang at her home after her car was set alight overnight. Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into suspected extortion after the message, which was delivered with a mobile phone, contained death threats. France's illicit drug market nearly tripled in value between 2010 and 2023, rising from an estimated €2.3billion ⁠to €6.8billion, according to a report published in December ​2025 by the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT). Civilians were terrified after gunshots were heard outside a metro station in Brussels, where CCTV showed two masked gunmen believed to be linked to the drugs world  On Thursday in Marseille, reality TV star and influencer Carla Moreau (pictured), 29, received a threatening letter from the drug gang at her home after her car was set alight overnight A firefighter inspects the scene of an explosion in the Osystraat, near the Franklin Rooseveltplaats, in Antwerp, on April 2, 2023 Last year, French justice minister Gérald Darmanin said France is suffering a 'cancer' of drug dealing, with no 'safe places' left. Darmanin said in an interview that even the 'smallest rural town' in France is now 'familiar with cocaine and cannabis'. 'Drugs, for example, have always existed, but today we can clearly see that in the smallest rural town, they know about cocaine, cannabis,' he said. 'It's no longer just in the places where we were looking for the potential problem' he added, suggesting France has become 'more violent'. Meanwhile, in neighbouring Belgium, legally produced cannabis from Canada is pouring into the country, fuelling concerns that it is increasingly becoming a narco state. An investigation by The Telegraph found that cannabis farms, legalised under former Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, are supplying smugglers with powerful marijuana to be shipped to the port in Antwerp. In 2025, customs seized 32 tonnes of cannabis at the port - a 500 per cent increase from the previous year. In the first six months of 2026, 10.8 tonnes of cannabis has already been seized. The smuggling operation is being managed by Chinese state-linked criminal networks. At the port of Antwerp, gangs are paying corrupt dock workers £40,000 to divert 6metre-long shipping containers carrying the drugs to different parts of the port, allowing them to avoid customs inspections, officials told The Telegraph. The cannabis is then transported across to the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy, using lightly monitored land routes. Other drugs such as cocaine are also smuggled into Europe's second biggest port. Most of the drugs originate in Colombia, as well as Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay and Brazil. Antwerp has become an increasingly dangerous battleground for drug gangs, with criminals armed with assault rifles and hand grenades blackmailing and intimidating public officials in a bid to keep cocaine and cannabis shipments out of the hands of police. The situation has deteriorated to the point where some public officials have been placed under police protection after being followed and targeted with attempted bribes by gang members. Earlier this year, senior Belgian judge Bart Willocx, warned that without immediate action, innocent civilians - who have nothing to do with the criminal underworld - risk getting wrapped up in the violence. Willocx's court published an open letter from an anonymous judge last October who said mafia groups had taken hold of the country, adding that they had become 'a parallel force that challenges not only the police, but the judiciary'. Portuguese authorities seized a record haul of cocaine from a semi-submersible craft intercepted off the Azores archipelago Guido Vermeiren, prosecutor general for the Antwerp and Limburg regions, agreed with the letter, adding that Belgium had become a place with 'threats' and 'corruption'. Willocx described the devastating effects of the drug trade on Belgian society, including on children as young as 13, who have been bribed by gangs to steal cocaine from ports. 'We really have a problem and we should make more investments in staff and in other resources to cope with it,' Willocx said in an interview with The Guardian. The judge said that people who refuse to comply with the gangs face threats and attacks, saying port employees who hesitate 'received letters, photos of their children' and experienced 'attacks at their homes with homemade explosives'. Gruesome cases of gang violence related to drugs have been plaguing the western European country for years. In October of last year, the dismembered body of Tijn, a 25-year-old man who had gone missing from Alkmaar in September, was discovered at a holiday home in Belgium, with reports suggesting his death was linked to a drugs dispute. In 2022, 46-year-old Yacine El M'Rabet was tortured to death in Brussels for reportedly stealing cocaine from his bosses Michaël Pindeville and Ahmed El Battouti. He was discovered on the side of the street after reportedly having been burned on his genitals with an iron and with a homemade blowtorch, doused with ammonia, and beaten with a gas canister and a metal bar, which was also used to rape him. That same year, Dutch media reported that a 17-year-old had his earlobe cut off, tendons in his hand severed and a piece of one of his toes removed after he was suspected of having tipped off another gang about the location of 300kg of cocaine in East Flanders. In a particularly hideous case, an 11-year-old girl was shot dead in Antwerp in 2023 after being caught up in the crossfire of warring drug traffickers. The child, who was from the Merksem district, was having dinner with her family when their house was shot at. And in 2020, Dutch police discovered a makeshift torture chamber, nicknamed the 'treatment room' by criminals, while investigating the drug trade in the Netherlands. The sound-proofed shipping container, which held a dentist chair equipped with restraints, was discovered in a warehouse in Wouwse Plantage, a village south of Rotterdam in southwestern Netherlands, close to the border with Belgium. Authorities raided the warehouse after the worldwide underground criminal phone system EncroChat was cracked, leading to the arrest of 746 underworld kingpins in Britain alone. The torture chamber had not yet been used, said police, who alerted potential victims to go into hiding after messages revealed the existence of such a room. Inside the container they found tools including pliers, scalpels and handcuffs ready for use. Six other containers were set up to hold prisoners, all lined with foil in an effort to deter the victims being spotted on thermal imaging cameras and some equipped with a chemical toilet. Meanwhile in the Mediterranean, Spain has now overtaken Belgium and the Netherlands as Europe's main cocaine getaway, according to the EU Drugs Agency - a shift law enforcement say is fuelling unprecedented violence. For decades, Spain's location - with its long Atlantic coastline and ties to South America - has made it a natural entry point for illicit cargo. The country is also the main corridor for hashish, thanks to the narrow nine-mile gap between Morocco and the southern port of Algeciras, easily crossed by high-powered boats within minutes. A 'dentist chair', where prisoners would have been strapped in and tortured, was discovered in the Netherlands Once notorious as a bolthole for Britain's most wanted criminals, the 'Costa del Crime' has become the front line in a battle between ruthless narco gangs and increasingly overwhelmed Spanish police. Shootings, high-speed chases and gruesome punishments are now alarmingly common along the country's southern coastline. Earlier this year, Spanish police uncovered a sophisticated 'maze-like' underground tunnel used to smuggle tonnes of hashish from Morocco into Europe. The secret passage, hidden beneath an industrial warehouse in the North African exclave of Ceuta, was fitted with pumping systems and soundproofing to avoid detection, officers said. Investigators described the network as a feat of engineering, with multiple levels, rail tracks and heavy-duty lifting equipment designed to move vast quantities of drugs across the border. Authorities believe the network was capable of moving significant quantities of drugs into mainland Spain and beyond into the rest of Europe. And last summer, two Scottish gangsters were shot dead in a bar popular with expats in the south of Spain. Days later, a Swedish rapper was gunned down outside a cafe in front of terrified holidaymakers. And in September, a group of alleged drug smugglers unloaded a shipment from a large speed-boat in front of stunned beachgoers on Spain's Costa del Sol. Footage shot by tourists on Playa Ancha in Casares showed at least six men casually moving what appeared to be three bales of drugs from a speed boat and onto a vehicle parked up close to the shore. And in January of this year, a 'narco submarine' carrying a record haul of cocaine believed to be worth £520million was seized. Portuguese authorities said they had intercepted nearly nine tonnes of narcotics some 265 miles off the the Azores archipelago in the North Atlantic. A police spokesperson called the operation 'the biggest seizure of cocaine ever in Portugal', and said officers were assisted by the navy and air force, as well as UK and US authorities, in difficult weather conditions. The submersible eventually sank with 35 of the 300 packages of drugs to the bottom of the ocean as Portuguese police attempted to board it. The submarine came from Latin America and had three Colombians and a Venezuelan on board. All four were arrested.