Cross-border co-operation among criminal justice institutions on combating transnational crime in focus at annual OSCE police experts meeting

Criminal justice experts from OSCE participating States, executive structures and international organizations gathered in Vienna at the OSCE’s Annual Police Experts Meeting which started in Vienna on 17 June 2014.

Participants of the two-day meeting will discuss legal provisions, mechanisms and tools for enhancing cross-border co-operation between law enforcement and judicial authorities at all levels, and examine specific examples from different regions of the OSCE area.

“Crime is no longer contained by a country’s borders,” said Pierre von Arx, opening the meeting on behalf of Switzerland’s 2014 OSCE Chairmanship.  “To effectively fight against transnational crime, close trans-border co-operation between police and judicial services at the bilateral, regional and international levels is needed.”

He added that one of the Swiss Chairmanship’s objectives under its leitmotif ‘Creating a Security Community for the Benefit of Everyone’, is boosting the OSCE’s support to the participating States and Partners for Co-operation in building the capacity of their criminal justice systems in order to effectively address transnational threats.

Alexey Lyzhenkov, OSCE Co-ordinator of Activities to Address Transnational Threats said that “while a solid legal foundation for international co-operation of criminal justice institutions has been established, and a number of regional co-ordination and co-operation mechanisms have been created, the effective implementation of these legal provisions still proves to be a challenge in many cases.”

He expressed his hope that this meeting will contribute to identifying good practices and recommendations for addressing these challenges in all of the regions of the OSCE. “These good practices and recommendations will be crucial to combat the threats that transnational organized crime poses on our societies,” Lyzhenkov stressed.

The annual meeting is organized by the OSCE Transnational Threats Department's Strategic Police Matters Unit. The meeting aims to provide a platform for national authorities to exchange views and to improve the mechanisms of inter-agency co-operation in view of speeding up the joint responses to transnational criminal activities.