Belgian Presidency EU 2010 - Police Expected results

Short History and context :

The European Police College, CEPOL, is a recent European Agency which action and reflection has gone beyond the national divisions since long.

Both the mission and the vision of the agency reflect this supranational dimension by its contribution to the European police cooperation through training, and its recognition by other European and international authorities as a pole of excellence and reference for the harmonized training of police officers.

The European Police College ( www.cepol.europa.eu ) is a major actor in the field of police cooperation in Europe. Established in 2001, CEPOL was originally a network of police training institutes financed by the Member States, responsible for the organisation of training courses in English for the police and gendarmerie forces from all Member States. 2006 was a turning point in the history of CEPOL: it has been raised to the status of European agency and is thus since then financed by a community budget.

The General objective of the file (results to be reached on the middle/long term)

The objective of this presidency is to insure the visibility, the legibility and the coherence of the European agency's action in adequacy with the missions assigned to the CEPOL in the framework of its statutes, of the European policy and of the well understood interest of all Member States.

A presidency comes within the continuity of the previous actions while integrating specific accents to it (see point4).

The main current jobs on the middle/long term:

• The ' Common Curricula '
  The topics of the ' Common Curricula ' are in line with the priorities determined at the European level (European Commission, Council of the European Union, European Parliament, Chief of police Task Force, etc.).
  Let us mention in particular the following topics: Counter Terrorism, European Police Cooperation, Europol, Ethics and Prevention of corruption police, Domestic Violence, Money Laundering, Trafficking in Human Beings, Civilian Crisis Management, Drug Trafficking and Management of Diversity.
• The AGIS program of exchange
  AGIS is a framework program financed by the European Commission to promote the police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters and to support the practitioners' contribution in this domain, in order to develop a European policy on the matter. It aims at improving the cross-border police collaboration and the understanding of the various police cultures throughout Europe.
  This program is coming to an end (June 2010) and will be replaced by the Erasmus project (see infra).
• The Euromed Program
  The CEPOL Euromed Police II project aims at reinforcing the international police collaboration in the framework of the general MEDA program. This cooperation program between the European Union (EU) and the MEDA countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Syria and Tunisia) covers the major aspects of organized crime (terrorism, trafficking in human beings, drugs, weapons, nuclear, bacteriological and chemical substances, financial and cyber criminality, etc.)
• The European priorities
  As an European agency, CEPOL has to answer the priorities defined by the European authorities in charge of the reflection on the contemporary police stakes.
• The partnership
  CEPOL signed cooperation agreements with prestigious institutions at the European (Frontex, Eurojust, Europol) and even international (Interpol) levels.
  The Stockholm program is going to induce the reinforcement of these cooperation agreements with these agencies.
  In line with the European Neighbourhood Policy, CEPOL has also developed a partnership with the AEPC (Association of European Police Colleges). This inter-network partnership permits to address countries located outside the EU but in a priority zone for the Commission.

Belgium's priority lines

• The Belgian presidency intends to focus on a return to CEPOL's core business i.e. the training of Senior Police Officers (cf. Council Decision).
  In the same framework, the presidency intends to take an active part in the definition and the implementation of the ' Erasmus police ' project, which will be introduced by the Spanish presidency.
• The accent will also be laid on the valorisation of the digital era, by promoting the use of e-net through making an extensive use of the collaborative tools such as the document management system. The Belgian presidency will be pilot in this field.
• The implementation of a ' strategic framework ' aiming at implementing the CEPOL strategy following the example of Europol's initiative. The document drafted by the Belgian delegation received the full approval of the last Governing Board of the Swedish presidency. CEPOL has put Belgium in charge of implementing this strategy during 2010. The objective is to provide the Hungarian presidency with a managerial toolbox (metric tools (KPI, ROI,…)) allowing the follow-up and measure of CEPOL's core-business both on the quantitative and qualitative plans in the perspective of an accountability and a policy of excellence towards the Commission).
• The organization of the leadership conference.

Author : Alain Ruelle
Last review : 28-01-2010