France has launched a new G7-backed network linking major ports, customs services and international organisations in an effort to improve intelligence sharing and coordination against global drug trafficking routes.
France formally launched the initiative on Monday, 9 November 2026, during a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of Seven in Paris. The meeting ran on 9 and 10 November.
The network covers 14 ports. It brings together the G7 countries — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — along with Brazil and South Korea, major international ports, and organisations including Interpol, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the International Maritime Organization and the World Customs Organization.
Targeting the whole supply chain
The network aims to improve cooperation against narcotics trafficking through major maritime hubs by targeting the entire supply chain, from production and transit countries to destination markets.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced the launch at the Paris meeting. The initiative is intended to close gaps that traffickers exploit when drugs move between jurisdictions, with ports, customs services and international agencies sharing intelligence more quickly.
The sources reporting the launch did not name the 14 ports individually. No seizures, arrests or specific trafficking routes were linked to the announcement.
A crowded G7 agenda in Paris
The Paris meeting of G7 foreign ministers came ahead of three-way talks between Ukraine, Russia and the United States in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, 10 November. Officials from France, Britain, Germany, NATO and the European Commission were also due to be in the Emirati capital.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said on Monday that she saw little sign Russia genuinely wanted to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. She was speaking on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Paris.
On 5 November, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni warned that Europe risked becoming irrelevant to efforts to end the war if member states kept pursuing separate diplomatic tracks instead of agreeing on a common representative and strategy.
The ports alliance was the clearest concrete outcome to emerge from the Paris meeting on its first day, giving the G7 a joint operational project beyond the diplomatic statements on Ukraine.
