Course Report: Illegal Trafficking of Waste and Organised Crime

In the same period in which the Annual Report drawn up by Legambiente on Environmental Organized Crime was published, the CEPOL course on Illegal Trafficking of Waste and Organized Crime was held in Rome at the Scuola di Perfezionamento per le Forze di Polizia (the Italian interagency College of Advanced Studies for Law Enforcement Officials). The course ran from 2 – 5 October 2012.Experts coming from 18 European countries shared their experiences, compared their national laws on this matter and deepened their knowledge on the European rules in this field. During the course, a special attention was given to the respective national experiences as well as to the case studies which have been presented with enthusiasm and a lot of data by all the participants, in particular by the experts from Spain and Malta, which supported Italy in carrying out this event. The contribution given by Europol is to be pointed out. The lecturer from Europol focused his presentation on two aspects: the analysis of the importance of this phenomenon and police cooperation tools, available at European and international level. Also the contribution given by the University professors is to be underlined: the prominent academic researcher in the field of Transnational Crime (Università Cattolica in Milan) highlighted some criminogenic elements contained in those legislations which result to be too complex, as well as the strategic importance of the instruments aimed at preventing criminal phenomena, with a special reference to the Illegal Trafficking of Waste and Organized Crime. As regards Italy, this course has been organized by the Environment Protection Special Units of the Carabinieri Corps and of the National Corps of Foreign Rangers. Besides the Illegal Trafficking of Waste, also other types of crimes have been dealt with, such as trafficking of animals, food fraud, security in the food production and distribution chain, which are included in the Italian term “ecomafie” -Organized Environmental Crime - (recently used also by the FBI). The contents dealt with during the course of this year are similar to those analyzed on the occasion of the Course held last year. CEPOL Course No 05/2012 not only focused on environmental crime, but it also provided a comprehensive scenario of the crimes related to the environment protection and health security in the European Union, also in view of possible further activities to be carried out by CEPOL, such as the implementation of a Common Curriculum on this topic. Moreover, the participants have been urged to take into account also the exchange programmes as a possibility of cooperation supported by the Training European Agency. In fact, in 2013, the exchange programmes will dealt with the broad topic concerning “organized crime”, which could include also the issue related to trafficking of waste. In this framework, all the experts who took part in this meeting held in Rome expressed their intention to keep in contact with each other and to exchange examples of good practices. The Italian CEPOL Unit ensured its availability in supporting them in this activity, according to the “leading principles” of CEPOL. Senior National Police Officer Rossanna Farina Head of the Italian CEPOL Unit Vice Consigliere Ministeriale