<h6><strong>The Diplomat</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The city of Cadiz will host on February 14 the fourth summit of the Coalition against Organized Crime, a group created in Brussels in 2021 that brings together the heads of the Interior and Justice of Spain, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden with the aim of strengthening cooperation in the fight against serious crime and drug trafficking.</strong></h4> This was announced on Thursday in Brussels by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, during the meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Interior. The Cadiz summit will be the fourth of the Coalition, after those held in Amsterdam (2022), Antwerp (2023) and Hamburg (2024). The minister forwarded the invitation to his counterparts in the coalition and to the new European Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner, during a working dinner held on Wednesday in Brussels. Grande-Marlaska insisted on the need to strengthen transnational cooperation against organised crime, “not only within the European Union, but by sharing efforts with other regions affected by the same scourge”. In this regard, she pointed to Spain as “the bridge that promotes collaboration and mutual understanding” between Latin America and North Africa, “priority regions for the EU due to the common challenges we share”, she said. <h5><strong>Right to asylum</strong></h5> On the other hand, Grande-Marlaska requested this Thursday “maximum caution and maximum respect” for the fundamental rights of the EU and not to take measures that could put the right to asylum at risk, one day after the Commission presented a communication to combat what they consider to be an “instrumentalisation of migrants” by Russia and Belarus, which could allow certain restrictions to be applied to the right to asylum on the eastern border of the EU. “Clearly for Spain, and we have always said this, the right to asylum, the right to refuge is obviously essential”, as it is “a basic pillar of a democracy” and, at the same time, “the values that define what the European Union is” and in this context he stressed the need for “maximum caution and maximum respect for fundamental rights”, declared the Spanish minister. Apart from asking that the communication from Brussels be “analysed very carefully and within the framework of scrupulous respect for fundamental rights”, he stressed that for Spain “the right of access to international protection and asylum is essential and is individual”. The communication presented this week is based on the assumption that Russia and Belarus are “taking advantage” of people, through a “hybrid war”, as a political tool to destabilise the EU and endanger the security and integrity of the Schengen area and the security of the Union and aims to prevent these countries from using the right to asylum for these purposes.
