Debate: Cooperation on the fight against organised crime in the Western Balkans
Date: TUESDAY, 14 DECEMBER 2021
Speaker: Janez Lenarčič
Language: EN

In the latest 2021 enlargement package, we report in detail how organised crime continues to be a threat in the region. It affects people, businesses, state institutions and the economy as a whole, but the Commission also notes that this is an area where results have been achieved, in particular in the fight against drug production and trafficking, smuggling of migrants, trafficking in human beings, organised property crime, smuggling of excise goods, notably cigarettes and firearms. These results have been made possible because Western Balkans law enforcement agencies are increasingly working with our EU counterparts to tackle organised crime, concretely, by stepping up operational police cooperation, especially through the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats, known as EMPACT, and with EU Justice and Home Affairs agencies.  The new EU strategy to tackle organised crime and the new EU strategy on combating trafficking in human beings, aim at supporting operational cooperation and helping to equip partners, including in the Western Balkans, with the tools they need to root out complex criminal structures. The EU Drugs Strategy and its action plan have also a strong international cooperation component. This confirms the EU’s commitment to help our Western Balkans partners.  As you remember, in 2020 we had already integrated the regional road map against the proliferation of small arms and light weapons into the EU action plan on foreign firearms trafficking. The strategy will offer more opportunities to intensify operational law enforcement cooperation in a number of priority areas, such as all those mentioned in the report of honourable Mandl, and these are equally relevant for the Western Balkan region as they are for our own European Union.  A lot more still needs to be done. That’s why the Commission fully supports the need to step up cooperation with the region in the fight against organised crime, and this was most recently reaffirmed as one of our core priorities in the engagement with the Western Balkans in the EU Western Balkans Justice and Home Affairs Ministerial earlier this month. As noted in the report, there are clear links between the security of the region and that of the European Union. Our approach to supporting the region in the fight against organised crime addresses these links. It focuses on building a criminal justice system capacity in line with EU acquis and increased strategic and operational cooperation with the EU.  We concur with your assessment that criminal justice systems remain to be strengthened and that their independence and professionalism must be enhanced. We are working closely with local judicial authorities to support a robust criminal justice chain and provide hands-on mentoring and advice, as well as judicial training for staff. We are also supporting the implementation of comprehensive performance measurement tools of the justice systems.  We note that your report documents many instances of successful cooperation, which is supported by the instrument for pre-accession funding, such as the secondment to Western Balkans liaison prosecutors to Eurojust and that has led to a significant increase of judicial cooperation, and we plan to boost this cooperation with Eurojust even further.  We will continue to accompany and support in the engagement in the fight against organised crime by mobilising the instrument for pre-accession assistance to priority areas. This includes the integration of the region into the work of EU Justice and Home Affairs agencies such as Europol, CEPOL, Eurojust, Frontex and the EU’s Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.  Finally, I wish to underline the importance of wider international cooperation and coordination in the fight against organised crime. We strongly believe that work with our key international partners such as the United States, the United Kingdom and the international organisations such as OSCE, NATO and UNODC, is a prerequisite to successfully address common security challenges. I thank you and I look forward to the discussion.