Joint declaration by the Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs of the Member States of the European Union and the candidate countries in association with the European Commission on the protection of commercial drivers engaged in export trade from becoming victims of organised crime
Date: 2002-10-14
Institutions: European Commission, Justice and Home Affairs Council
Subjects: drivers, export, fight against crime, organised crime, public safety

31.1.2003

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

C 24/9

Joint declaration by the Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs of the Member States of the
European Union and the candidate countries in association with the European Commission on
the protection of commercial drivers engaged in export trade from becoming victims of organised
crime

(2003/C 24/02)

We, the Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs of the Member
States of the European Union in association with the European
Commission, and we, the Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs
of Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania
and Turkey,
the former hereinafter referred to as Member
States of the European Union and the latter referred to as
the candidate countries, having met in Luxembourg on 14
October 2002,

WHEREAS:

(1) Providing our citizens with a high level of safety by
developing common action to prevent and to combat
crime, organised or otherwise,
is a shared objective of
our countries.

law enforcement

(2) One of the most important tasks of actors in this area,
including
crime
prevention units in all European countries is to protect
and safeguard all exposed groups in society and the
position of such groups should be paid special heed by
the authorities.

authorities

and

(3) Vehicles engaged in export trade are an easy target for
property crime in the eyes of many criminal organisations
owing to the high-value goods which they often carry and
the low level of manning and protection which they
usually enjoy.

(4) Commercial drivers engaged in export trade do in terms of
the risk of falling victim to serious crime form an exposed
group whose security requires special precautions.

(5) Trade and transportation between the countries of Europe
is of the highest importance in securing the economic and
political development in the region.

(6) The security of commercial drivers engaged in export trade
is a shared concern of Member States and candidate
countries and an adequate level of security for drivers
the problems be uniformly addressed by
requires that
Member States and candidate countries owing to the trans-
national nature of the export trade.

EXPRESS OUR DETERMINATION TO:

1. Ensure

that

appropriate measures

are

commercial drivers engaged in export
victims of organised crime;

taken so that
fall

trade do not

2. Ensure that

the necessary protection against organised
property crime and violent assaults is provided to this
group;

3. Raise awareness of the development in these types of crimes
and as appropriate conduct national or international surveys
to map the incidents of crime directed at
in order
commercial drivers engaged in export trade and investigate
the nature and scale of the problem and the background to
it in their respective countries;

4. Initiate the appropriate measures to fight these types of
crimes and — based on the estimated nature and scale of
the problem and the outcome of conducted surveys —
particularly consider the need to

(a)

improve security on sections of road and parking sites
generally and especially in the problem areas identified,
including by stepping up the presence and visibility of
law enforcement officials on the relevant roads and sites;

(b) undertake specific crime prevention initiatives in this
area, as appropriate, but
in particular by increasing
the involvement of the relevant law enforcement auth-
orities in the location and design of safe sites,
in
conjunction with increasing the number of supervised
parking sites manned around the clock;

(c) keep

central

statistics

and
on
convictions with regard to violent attacks on drivers
in order to continuously make actions in this field
more targeted and effective;

reports,

charges

(d) take further steps to ensure that law enforcement auth-
orities are alert to any links between attacks in several
countries and in that connection,
in accordance with
national
law, and existing international agreements
exchange information as widely as possible with the
relevant authorities in other countries and generally
step up cross-border cooperation to prevent and tackle
the problem.