Towards Enhanced Police Cooperation
Towards Enhanced Police Cooperation
Opening speech by Mrs. Sólveig Pétursdóttir, Minister of Justice
Ladies and Gentlemen.
First of all I would like to welcome you all to this seminar and those of you who are coming from abroad I would specially like to say: Welcome to Iceland. I hope your stay here in Iceland will be enjoyable, we will do our best to make this a memorable event for you, both personally and professionally.
I have the pleasure today to open the seminar Towards Enhanced Police Cooperation, which is organized by the Ministry of Justice and Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Iceland, in good cooperation with the Belgian Presidency of the EU.
As you know Iceland is currently chairing the so-called Mixed Committee in the Schengen Cooperation, in accordance with the association agreement between Iceland, Norway and the Council of the European Union. Through this agreement Iceland and Norway are fully participating in the Schengen cooperation along with 13 Member States of the European Union.
Iceland and the other Nordic countries started their full participation in Schengen earlier this year. From the beginning we had high hopes for the Schengen cooperation, as a way to facilitate free movement of people and at the same time as a tool to strengthen both international cooperation and improve our work at national level. Although our experience is still limited we strongly believe that the Schengen cooperation has brought us what we aimed for.
There are many important issues that fall under the Schengen cooperation. During our presidency of the Mixed Committee we wanted to highlight specially one of the most important parts. Police cooperation came first to mind as one of the most important parts of the Schengen cooperation and there are several reasons behind it.
In recent years many steps have been taken to enhance and develop further police cooperation in Europe. This has been done on bilateral level between neighboring countries, between small groups of countries like the Nordic cooperation, through the Schengen cooperation and at the level of the European Union. Important tools have been produced for that purpose such as creating information systems and institutions have been established to monitor and facilitate such cooperation. This developments and further challenges ahead are the background of the seminar and the aim is to give participants an opportunity to address the situation today and the future of police cooperation in Europe in an open manner.
This seminar is held in the shadow of the most serious terrorist attack of all times. One of the ways in the fight against terrorism is to strengthen international police cooperation and that of course is the main aim of this seminar. Terrorism is not the only new threat we are faced with. Increased hooliganism in relation to major public events, increased narcotics operations by international criminal gangs and increased trafficking, and exploitation of women and children underline the growing need for close international police cooperation. The importance of this issue is therefore very high.
I hope that here today we will be able to evaluate the achievement that have been reached in this field and discuss whether our cooperation has met the expectations bound to it when it was designed. Do we need to work closer together? Have we learned from the experience and do we need a new approach to international police cooperation? I hope that the lecturer at the seminar will shed some light on these and many more interesting questions here today and that you will be able to bring back to their institutions and countries improvements on current systems as well as new ideas.
The agenda of the seminar looks very interesting and we have experienced lecturers addressing the seminar as you can see on the agenda. Today we will listen to lecturers from both Europol and the European Commission, lecturer in criminal law from the University of Amsterdam and lecturers from four different Schengen states.
Ladies and Gentlemen.
I wish you a good and productive seminar. For our visitors from abroad I sincerely hope that you will enjoy your stay here in Iceland and that the weather will be nice. I can promise you an interesting seminar but as regards the weather it's not in my hands to promise you anything. Even though I'm not only minister of Justice but also Ecclesiastical Affairs the weather is not yet under my command.
Mr. Gunnar Snorri Gunnarsson, our Ambassador and Permanent Representative towards EU in Brussels will chair the seminar. As I welcome him and wish him every success today I now declare the seminar Towards Enhanced Police Cooperation open.