9. Expresses its concern about the difficulties of the democratisation process in Kyrgyzstan which seem to stem from the weak nature of Kyrgyzstan's interim government and the strength of criminal networks in the country, including of drug-smugglers in southern Kyrgyzstan; believes that creation of a political system which permits representation of different interests and arbitration between them is nevertheless necessary for reducing tensions and avoiding new eruptions of violence and that the EU and EU Member States must actively support democratisation and strive to reduce the gaps between the attitudes of international actors, so as ...[+++] to improve the prospects for the reform process in Kyrgyzstan;

The dangerous Schengen Agreements, which abolished all controls at the European Union’s borders, allow them to be used as drug smugglers or robbers.

Children are also being put into situations where they can be used as slaves and as drug runners.

Although the mandate of the original Europol Drugs Unit was restricted to combating drug trafficking, illicit trade in radioactive and nuclear materials, clandestine immigration networks and illegal vehicle trafficking, that mandate has gradually been extended to cover trafficking in human beings and money-laundering, terrorist activities against life, limb, personal freedom or property, forgery of money and means of payment and, finally, to serious forms of international crime.

I have been given access to figures that show that of the 400,000 to 500,000 illegal immigrants who come to the European Union every year, at least 200,000 are brought into the European Union by smugglers.

The exercises involved in this programme were created under the Customs Mutual Assistance Group in 1986 as a Community-wide exercise aimed at drugs smugglers who make use of European airport transit facilities to disguise their true point of departure from a drugs source country.