18.02.2020.

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It is crucial that the new Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) lives on in practice

The revision of the Action Plan for Chapter 24, with a particular focus on the fight against organized crime and the fight against drugs, was the topic of a meeting between the Working Group of the National Convention on the EU for Chapter 24 and the  Negotiating Group on Justice, Freedom and Security. The meeting was held on February 18, 2020 in Belgrade.

Member of the Executive Board of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCBP), which coordinates the WG NCEU for Chapter 24, Sonja Stojanovic Gajić, opened the meeting.

„The fight against organized crime and high-level corruption, as well as the removal of political influence on police work, are key for the progress under Chapter 24,” emphasized Stojanović Gajić.

Effective cooperation of law enforcement agencies and prosecutions is required, better alignment of the measures from the  Chapters 23 and 24, as well as track record of evidence in the sense of successfully delivered judicial decisions. Civil society organizations have pointed out these aspects even before, and the European Commission has recognized this in its comments, concluded Stojanović Gajić.

Zoran Lazarov, Assistant Minister of Interior and President of the Negotiating Group for the Chapter 24, presented the EU Expert Mission who stayed in Serbia, work on the completion of the Chapter 24 Action Plan and the Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA), and other activities of the Ministry of Interior.

Lazarov emphasized the recommendations of the Expert Mission, which Stojanović Gajić summed up in four areas. The first involves better cooperation between the prosecution and the police, while the second can be called sensitive areas and concerns the interception of communications, the role of security services in criminal investigations, and the protection and sharing of DNA data. The third area is related to the strategic linking of the plans that the Ministry of Interior was obliged to develop, and the fourth and most significant one relates to the initiative to amend the laws relating to the criminal procedure, in accordance with the activities in Chapter 24.

„What has been specifically analyzed within the Expert Mission is the capacity of law enforcement agencies in the field of application of special investigative measures, with a focus on technical standards, where we received a recommendation for the purchase of certain equipment related to the implementation of special investigative methods. Techniques for collecting evidence, primarily DNA bases, have also been analyzed, as well as ways to obtain and manage the causes themselves,“ explained Lazarov.

One of the recommendations is that it is necessary to conduct an additional analysis of the situation focused on the interception of communications and the role of the BIA in the procedure, which is already foreseen by the Action Plan, said Lazarov.

New Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA)

Martina Miljković from the Criminal Police Directorate presented the main findings of the new SOCTA and emphasized that the focus was on making the recommendations feasible in practice.

Saša Djordjević, BCSP researcher,said that the key thing is that the SOCTA lives on in practice. Djordjevic questioned whether the threat of organized crime increased or decreased when compared to the previous five-year period. Miljkovic replied that the reduced number of organized crime groups does not mean that the level of organized crime decreased.

Better cooperation between police and prosecution needed

Lidija Komlen Nikolić from the Association of Public Prosecutors and Deputy Prosecutors of Serbiaagreed about the need for better cooperation between the prosecution and the police, and emphasized that it is necessary for prosecutors to become more familiar with the Ministry of Interior’sorganization.

“The provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code should be amended. They have proven ineffective and restrictive in a number of things, which need to be discussed on a planned basis,“ said Komlen Nikolić.

The need to link activities related to Chapters 23 and 24 was also highlighted by Jovana Spremo from YUCOM, Coordinator of the NKEU Task Force for Chapter 23. She also touched on new EU enlargement methodologies.

“I would like to urge the discussion about what we can change in Chapters 23 and 24 if we accept to apply the new methodology. Losing time for another technical process of aligning with the new methodology is not helpful. There is no reason to work on that if we already have guidance on what the methodology will apply to.” emphasized Spremo.
The National Convention on the European Union (NCEU)is a permanent, institutionalized body within which a thematically structured debate takes place between representatives of the state administration, non-governmental organizations, politicians, experts, professional organizations and the general public on Serbia’s accession to the European Union. NCEU consists of 21 working groups that cover the themes of all 35 chapters of the EU acquis. BCSP is the Coordinator of the Working Group for Chapter 24.

Tags: NKEU, organizovani kriminal, Poglavlje 24, Sasa Djordjevic, SOCTA, Sonja Stojanović Gajić

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