Project lead: CEPOL

The EUROMED Police project

The EUROMED Police project aims to enhance the capacity of the Southern Partner Countries (SPC) to fight serious and organised crime and to strengthen strategic cooperation between national law enforcement authorities in SPCs, as well as between SPCs, EU Member States and EU agencies.

Building on the achievements of the previous edition of the project, EUROMED Police IV, this edition aims to contribute to the upscaling of institutional capacity to protect citizens in EU neighbouring countires.

The partner countries of the project are Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority and Tunisia, together with regional organisations, such as AFRIPOL and the League of Arab States.

Context

In the fight against the most important threats posed by organised and serious international crime, cooperation between the European Union and Southern Partner Countries is crucial. CEPOL and Europol have already developed relevant experience in cooperating with countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, thus making the two EU agencies ideal drivers for the implementation of the project.

While Europol possesses a unique technical and professional expertise in analysis, information sharing and operational support, CEPOL leads the development and delivery of training.

In this context, CEPOL’s evidence-based approach to training needs assessment together with the flexibility and multiplayer level of its training portfolio building, will contribute to making EUROMED Police an ideal vehicle to take the training partnership with the Southern Neighbourhood region to the next level.

Specific objectives

Under the EUROMED Police project, and in partnership with Europol, CEPOL aims to reach the following specific objectives:

To enhance cooperation within the Southern Partner Countries and between the Southern Partner Countries and the European Union;
To enhance the capacity to produce a structured training needs analysis;
To enhance evidence-based identification of priority crime areas in the Southern Neighbourhood region.

Components

In order to reach these objectives, the project is divided into three main components:

1. Enhancing regional networks

The project aims to strengthen existing regional networks and strategic coordination, while also increasing ownership over project activities and their results.

A key role will be played by the Strategic Cooperation Forum, which will provide a unique opportunity for Southern Partner Countries, EU Member States and EU institutions and agencies to examine matters of strategic importance.

The groundwork will be laid through National Assessment Missions to establish contact with the law enforcement agencies of partner countries and to introduce the scope and structure of the EUROMED Police project.

The capacity building activities will be designed to ensure that partner countries’ staff who are tasked with coordinating capacity building portfolios and analysis receive up-to-date training to further develop their technical and coordination skills.

2. Training activities

In the framework of the EUROMED Police project, CEPOL will create synergies between different operational units in the auto-diagnostic process leading to training needs identification, enabled via the Operational Training Needs Assessment (OTNA).

The results of the OTNA will allow CEPOL to develop a solid training portfolio based on the concept of blended learning, a methodology that combines traditional face-to-face activities with online learning. In this context, CEPOL aims to deliver onsite activities at regional, sub-regional and national level, while also implementing e-learning activities. Additional online train-the-trainers activities will be dedicated to e-learning specialists in the partner countries.

Moreover, an exchange programme based on individual exchanges, study visits and a mentoring programme will encourage the sharing of good practices and expertise among the law enforcement community of the partner countries.

3. Regional threat assessment support

Strategic or operational exchange of data is a fundamental element for effective police cooperation. For this purpose, the project facilitated the nomination of focal points in each partner country who are responsible for coordinating the collection of strategic data (essentially security threats), thus forming the Network of Analysis Single Points of Contact (ANASPOC), the backbone of the EUROMED threat assessment. Support via training or workshops will be delivered to the ANASPOC throughout the project implementation period to facilitate the joint drafting of the next regional report.

The project continues working with the Threat Forum Platform (TFP), located within Europol’s Platform of Experts. Numerous contributions have already been submitted to the TFP during the previous phase of the EUROMED Police project and this exchange will ideally continue during this project phase.