Europol has hosted a four-day exercise bringing together specialist police teams from 12 EU countries to practise tracking suspects across borders in scenarios involving drug trafficking and threats to critical infrastructure.
The exercise, called Allies 2026, ran from 9 to 12 February at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague, Europol announced on Monday.
It said the participants included surveillance teams, in-flight security officers — commonly known as air marshals — and special intervention units, which carry out high-risk arrests.
The drill simulated two parallel investigations unfolding across multiple countries, with teams required to pass surveillance and operational information between jurisdictions as targets moved.
Two simulated cases — drugs and critical infrastructure
One scenario, code-named Operation Shamrock, followed suspects travelling from Ireland to the Netherlands to buy drugs using cryptocurrency, Europol said.
In the simulation, the suspects flew to Amsterdam, stayed overnight in Rotterdam, drove into France with drugs in a car and travelled by ferry from Cherbourg to Dublin before being followed to a warehouse where they were arrested by an Irish special intervention unit.
A second scenario, Operation Cargill, focused on suspects believed to be planning coordinated attacks on critical infrastructure in several countries.
Europol said the targets moved between Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Romania, and the simulated plot involved power stations, an oil port and a wind farm, ending with arrests.
Participants also tested an EU-funded tactical communications platform known as NEOS to share operational details in real time during the exercise.
The participating countries were Austria, Belgium, Czechia, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia.
