Organized Crime

Progress Report of the SPOC Board Chairman

1. Introduction

The mandate of the Stability Pact’s Initiative against Organized Crime (SPOC) is to oversee dialogue facilitation with international and regional representatives of the legal, academic, donor and law enforcement communities. The initiative assists joint project formulation regarding capacity building, awareness raising and legislative reforms. It is also involved in political advocacy and helps the SEE region to formulate strategies against organized crime. SPOC activities are in line with the London Conference on Organized Crime in SEE (November 2002) and the EU-Western Balkans Forum.

2. Working Structures

The former SPOC Chairman, the Head of the Department for International Law Enforcement Cooperation of the Austrian Criminal Intelligence Service (CIS)/Austrian Ministry of the Interior took over the responsibility of SPOC Programme Manager. He and his Germany-seconded Programme Officer are based in the premises of the Federal Intelligence Service in Vienna.
A Brussels-based expert, supported by a junior researcher, works for SCSP Working Table III’s Justice and Home Affairs team. They provide legal expertise and maintain regular contacts with the donor community and other SCSP initiatives related to criminal issues. They are also in constant dialogue with their counterparts from the European Commission and the European Council. The Brussels team advises the SC when addressing crime related matters.

The term of the Macedonian lawyer who currently leads the SPOC Secretariat will end by the end of the year. The position of the Head of the SPOC Secretariat was advertised through the SCSP website in spring 2004. In time a selected qualified candidate will arrive to lead the Secretariat. It is co-located with the SECI Transborder Crime Fighting Center (7th floor of the Parliament building) in Bucharest. A Romanian lawyer and a Macedonian secretary assist the Head of the SPOC Secretariat. For legal capacity-building purposes, a junior German lawyer served a six-month term at the Secretariat between May and November 2004. The Secretariat serves mainly as support unit. It drafted several papers related to customs services, confiscation of crime proceeds and on SEE media reporting on crime-related subjects.

The SPOC Board met for its second session in 2004 in Bucharest. The session took place on November 3rd. The new Chairman, a former Member of the European Parliament and Spokesman for Justice and Home Affairs has been endorsed. The Board discussed inter alia follow-up steps to the SEECP joint statement making full use of existing coordination mechanisms for the fight against organized crime from 18 May 2004, the findings of the missions by a group of states called “Friends of the Presidency, the SECI Center assessment and the status of the regional implementation of the United Nations Convention against transnational Crime (Palermo TOC).

The SPOC chairman congratulates FYRo Macedonia that it ratified the TOC. This leaves Moldova as the last state of SP partners in the region, which did not yet ratify the Convention.

3. Activities

a) Regionally combating main criminal activities and enhancing police co-operation

The former SPOC Board Chair invited the countries of the region to join drafting a South East European Police Cooperation Convention. In the meantime almost all SEE countries indicated their interest to benefit from this project, which awaits German funding.

The Austrian CIS and senior officers from the General Directorate in Bucharest drafted several training modules for the Romanian OC Unit meant to become a standard component for future curricula of the Romanian Police Academy. Swiss financed pilot training sets - including conflict management, moderation and the coordination of teamwork, techniques of project management and public relations - have been content of the training. The successful training module could serve as sample set for other specialized units in SEE countries.

The SPOC chair salutes the launching of the Council of Europe-led regional CARDS project on policing and fighting organized crime in the Western Balkans in summer of this year. It was agreed that SPOC would regularly attend project-related meetings and workshops.

In relation to Brussels-generated projects, the SP experts led a constant dialogue with their counterparts from the European Commission and the Council on the design of future regional programmes against organized crime in the Balkans. Of special interest are the findings of the above-mentioned group called “Friends of the Presidency”. This group was mandated by the JHA Council to explore on concrete measure to be taken to enhance the fight against organized crime originating from the Western Balkans. SPOC is involved to discuss findings concerning better effective exchange of information, improving operational cooperation and improving regional capacities.

b) SECI Center-Europol rapprochement

The Pact facilitated various talks between representatives of the Bucharest-based SECI Center for the Combating of Trans-Border Crime, Europol, Eurojust, the USA, the Commission and EU member states on the question of a rapprochement between the Center and European institutions. As a result, the European Commission financed an independent assessment of the SECI Center, which concluded that the SECI Center has the potential to eventually become a Europol Regional Office. In September 2004, the SPOC chairman saluted the release of the assessment report. The report pays respect to the success in bringing these countries together in order to exchange information and work collectively in the fight against Trans-Border Crime as a major achievement of the SECI Center. In this regard, it must be recognized as the regional policing tool. The SPOC Chairman will promulgate that assisting the Center on its way to become an efficient tool will also pay off for EU member states and European law enforcement institutions. The reports’ findings were then discussed in the Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) of the SECI Center on 28 October 2004. The JCC accepted the findings and decided that it will take concrete steps to initiate the transformation.

c) SEE Public Prosecutors Network (SEEPAG)

The SPOC chair salutes that the South East European Public Prosecutors Advisory Group (SEEPAG) intends to formalize its work. This group of prosecutors met in Belgrade in July 2004 for the third time. So far, SEEPAG - matching the composition of SECI Center member states – constitutes an informal network of public prosecutors in Southeast Europe, including Turkey, Slovenia, Greece and Hungary. Following the recent SECI Center-coordinated MIRAGE operation SEEPAG contact points played a role in convicting traffickers.

d) South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP)

Following the SEECP JHA ministerial statement from 18 May 2004 to make full use of the mechanisms to fight organized crime, the Romanian chairmanship in office of the SEECP proposed inter alia the creation of a database of legislative and institutional building measures to document the progress. It shall illustrate the ratification and national implementation process of the European and international conventions mentioned in the Joint Statement. The SEECP Consultation Group on Fighting Organized Crime and Corruption called upon a Romanian Analytical Team to provide a template containing the factual presentation and analysis, the self-assessment and the external assessment. The SPOC Secretariat will do the latter.

5. Outlook

The Chairman wishes to address the following issues in 2005:

Police officers and judges often feel that they are not enjoying political support for their work. This is connected with the sensitive issue that some decision-makers can be hardly convinced to take measures against organized crime because they are sometimes part of the problem instead of the solution. Therefore SPOC recommends for an integrated strategy to fight organized crime: close cooperation between experts (police, customs officers, boarder guards etc.), parliamentarians, local authorities and the support of the media to create public pressure.

The Chair will continue to invite all actors of the wider SPOC network to link up with joint project formulation/implementation along mandates and expertise. To realise an integrated strategy very concrete projects are needed. Some are on track, e.g. the Palermo TOC matrix or the police-cooperation-convention. New cross border-projects, for example against smuggling, could help to foster information-exchange, cross border-cooperation and joint working methodologies. The SPOC secretariat should extend its activities in this direction to generate the formulation and implementation of projects.

A lot of bilateral projects and various EU-driven programs have generated a myriad of activities, and a lot of parallel projects. It is almost impossible to get an overview of all existing assistance efforts. Therefore, SPOC supports clear strategy drafting, focus on some priority projects, flexible programs taking the actual situation in the region into account.

A closer cooperation between the SPOC secretariat and the SECI-Center should be envisaged. The SPOC Chair is convinced that the SECI-Center must be recognized as the regional policing tool to fight organized crime in the Balkans.

Measures for raising public awareness must be taken. Citizens need to understand that organized crime undermines civil society and stability. Therefore, attention should be also paid to schools and universities. Greater emphasis needs to be devoted to the law faculties in the region in order to ensure that young legal talent is available to strengthen the under-staffed courts. Awareness raising is the software against organized crime.

A close link between regional actors and Brussels-based politicians should result in a better understanding that the EU must support the region in its combat against organized criminal networks in SEE.