Without rights.
Without protection.
Without a voice.
But at least with enough strength in their backs to carry boxes full of cigarettes along mountain paths at night. Welcome to modern Europe in the year 2026.
People walk in the cold of the Pyrenees, on rocky paths, loaded like mules from the last century – just so that cheap cigarettes can be sold somewhere in Marseille or Toulouse. And while criminal networks make millions, those who carry all this often only get what remains in these systems: fear, silence, and interchangeability.
If one falls?
Then the next one comes.
Let this perversion settle slowly on your tongue. In political debates, many like to talk about “migration” as abstract columns of numbers or administrative files. But behind these terms are people so desperate that they carry contraband goods across mountains at night because a smuggler promised them a few bills or vague hope.
And of course, suddenly everyone discovers their moral outrage. Politicians show themselves “shocked.” Authorities talk about a “major blow to crime.” Soon, there will probably be press photos in front of maps and some weighty phrases about European cooperation.
Great.
The smuggling network is dismantled. The system behind it happily continues to live on.
Because the truth is inconvenient: such networks are not created out of thin air. They thrive where people have no protection and where there is at the same time a demand for cheap products. The market regulates everything – even the exploitation of human despair. It sounds harsh? But that’s how it is.
The double social morality seems particularly cynical in this context. The same people who find cheaper cigarettes “very convenient” then speak indignantly about criminal structures. As if the black market was created out of pure boredom. But consumption, price differences, and organized crime are much more closely linked than many want to admit.
And somewhere in the middle of all these investigation files, what really matters ends up disappearing: the human being.
Not the cardboard.
Not the tax losses.
Not the diplomatic cooperation.
The human being.
That nameless migrant crossing the mountains at night, who is cold, who falls or who maybe never reappears – so that others can save a few euros and criminals can count their profits.
What is truly frightening in this story is not even the smuggling itself. Smuggling has always existed. What is frightening is how quickly people in Europe become commodities again in the system. Interchangeable. Invisible. Convenient.
Almost like in the old days. But with modern logistics.
A commentary by C. Hatty