The CEPOL conference ‘Police Cooperation with Neighbouring Countries’ took place in Rome on 1-3 December 2010.
The conference was attended by 49 representatives from 24 countries: Armenia, Austria, Bulgaria, Belarus, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Jordan, Italy, Lebanon, Moldova, the Palestinian Authority, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom, as well as representatives from the European Commission, Frontex, OSCE and the PCC SSE Secretariat.
An analysis of the CEPOL strategy and the Stockholm Programme’s impact on police training was delivered by the CEPOL Director, Dr Ferenc Bánfi and Fabio Marini from the European Commission’s Directorate-General Home Affairs.
Italian experts Raffaella Campanati and Germana Ampanati di Falco presented the “European Neighbouring policy paper” and gave an overview of the new financial rules and funding opportunities in Europe.
Maurice Petit, AEPC President, illustrated the association’s cooperation with CEPOL and the police academies of the European Neighbouring Countries, while Catherine Lamothe-Andre, CEPOL Secretariat, gave a speech about the initiatives of the agency.
True to CEPOL’s style, participants were also the leading actors during the national presentations. Great work was done by the colleague from Georgia, Madlen Khelashvili and the working groups were well conducted by Stephanie Boisnard and Wolfgang Haeseker.
The conference provided a valuable opportunity to underline the Neighbouring Countries’ needs in the area of cooperation for police training purposes and the contribution that the EU can make through CEPOL, the European Police College.
One of the proposals was to dedicate the next European Neighbourhood Conference on a specific topic and of course all the participants underlined the great opportunity the conference provided to meet people and share ideas.
Supported by France, Germany and CEPOL Secretariat with contributions from AEPC (European Association of Police Colleges), the conference was managed by Salvatore Siena, the Deputy Chair of the CEPOL External Relations Working Group.
