Year XXXVIII, Number 2, July 2025

Fernando Iglesias
Member of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies; President, World Federalist Movement

The expansion of organized crime has become the main problem in Latin America, a region that is today - by far - the most violent in the world. More than 120,000 people were killed in 2024 in the territories between the Rio Grande and the Tierra del Fuego, representing a rate of 20.2 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (compared to 7 per 100,000 inhabitants in Africa and 3 in Europe). The situation is becoming dramatic in its two largest countries, Mexico and Brazil, which correspond by population, territory and economy to half of Central and South America, respectively. The enormous growth of transnational trafficking networks of drug, humans and arms is today the main threat to life, human rights, rule of law and democracy in the region. No need to mention, this is another of the disastrous results of the imbalance of forces between criminal organizations that ignore and mock on national borders, and the legal and police systems that pursue them, tied to the logic of national institutions and territory.

For all these reasons, the creation of regional and international institutions capable of combating organized crime is one of the objectives that, as a federalist, I have been pursuing for years. In particular, the creation of a Mercosur agency against Transnational Organized Crime that takes advantage of the European experience of Europol and Eurojust and achieves at the regional level the same objectives that the Direzione Nazionale Antimafia achieved in Italy: to centralize, coordinate and promote the work of prosecutors and security forces currently isolated and at the mercy of the mafias. The proposal, which has been years in preparation and development, has had the support of the Italian Ministero degli Esteri and the Latin American Institute (IILA), thanks to its Falcone-Borsellino program, which has financed the work of a group of South American and DNA experts to prepare a joint document on the need, posible capacities and functioning of the agency.

The work is beginning to bear fruit. At the LIII Meeting of Ministers of the Interior and Security of Mercosur (RMIS), held in Buenos Aires on May 30 with the presence of the delegations of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, it was decided to move forward the agenda, including the creation of the agency in the forthcoming July declaration that closes the Argentine pro tempore presidency, and committing that, during the next semester and under the Brazilian presidency, the agency will be created, recognizing the initiative of President Milei and the Argentine pro tempore presidency.

In the final declaration of the summit, the States Parties and Associated States highlighted the main achievements, among them: the “Protocol for the implementation of the Specialized Working Group for the fight against Criminal Organizations, through the implementation of joint police investigation teams and the creation of a Mercosur Agency against Transnational Organized Crime which will allow for closer operational cooperation between security forces and national police, consolidating the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and other forms of transnational crime”.

At both the general meeting and the bilateral meeting with Brazil, in which I participated, Argentina’s Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, pointed out that during Argentina’s pro tempore presidency the Group to Combat Transnational Organized Crime had become operational, with a view towards the creation of an agency to combat transnational organized crime in the next six months. And the Minister of Justice and Public Security of Brazil, Enrique Lewandoski, indicated that Brazil “fully supported Argentina’s proposal to create a specialized agency to combat transnational organized crime” and agreed “to put it into practice during the Brazilian pro tempore presidency” and then “extend it to the South American and global level”, since he considered that “Interpol, Ameripol and Europol are not sufficient”.

Of course, this is only the beginning. A lot of work will have to be done for the agency to be created and for it to be austere, modern and effective, rather than a mere bureaucratic structure. But its potential is enormous since, if it were to improve living conditions and security for Mercosur citizens, the agency would provide an excellent example of the potential of regional institutions to improve concrete aspects of citizens’ lives. Moreover, if the Mercosur’s example were extended to the South American and global level, as proposed by Minister Lewandoski, it would open an interesting window of opportunity for the development of international institutions. It would be an appropriate continuation of the efforts initiated by the UN Palermo Convention against transnational organized crime (2000) and a demonstration of the effectiveness of multilateral cooperation at a time when it is being severely questioned.