The Swiss city of Basel and its ports on the River Rhine are one of the access points for the vast amounts of cocaine arriving through the major Northern European seaports. SWI swissinfo.ch watches a customs control team in action.
There are no boats in sight on the Rhine. Rippled by a biting wind, the river today belongs to the seagulls. At midday, a single cargo ship dropped anchor at the port of Kleinhüningen in Basel, on the border with France and Germany. The vessel had set off from Rotterdam, heading upstream with its load of 59 containers.
Kleinhüningen – together with Birsfelden and Muttenz – is one of the three Rhine ports on Swiss territory. They are the national transport hub in the freight corridor between Rotterdam and Basel, as well as the main centres for the transshipment of goods from water to road or rail. In 2023, nearly 5,000 vessels carrying some 120,000 containersExternal link docked at these ports.
Kitted out with helmets and reflective vests, we are visiting the port with a deployment team from the Federal Office for Customs and Border Security. Our guide is Ioannis, head of the Basel customs control team, whom we can refer to only by his first name.
“Most of the containers have already been unloaded from the cargo ship and deposited on the quay,” Ioannis explains. While we walk to the terminal, two of his colleagues enter the transshipment area, informing the port managers of their intention to inspect three containers: two from China and one from Taiwan.
Needle in a haystack
The customs and border security officers’ job is rather like looking for a needle in a haystack. There is no way they can inspect all the containers that pass through the Basel ports, which handled between five and six million tonnes of goods in 2023.
“Only a small part of the imports can actually be checked,” Ioannis admits. “The inspections are carried out in a targeted manner based on the information we have.”
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