All Western Balkan countries have, at least officially, committed to joining the European Union and promised to fight organized crime head-on, as one of the priority areas during their accession talks. The European Commission’s Country Reports have repeated ad nauseam that the key focus should be on having a track record in prosecuting organized crime with final convictions.

By strengthening civil society, investigative journalism, NGOs and anti-corruption services we can show that the problem of organized criminal can be resolved. There is a lack of political will, so if we can’t tackle this problem necessarily from the top-down, we have to change the approach and tackle it from the bottom-up. This was concluded during the online discussion “Transnational Organized Crime in the Western Balkans: Effects in the Region and Beyond”, organized on October 7, by LSE IDEAS and Ratiu Forum, in cooperation with the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP).

One of the key preconditions for a successful fight against organized crime is the cooperation between governments and civil society organizations. This was a conclusion by the panelists of the online discussion "Boosting Resilience to Organized Crime in the Western Balkans," organized by the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) together with regional partners from the Western Balkans Organized Crime Radar (WB OCR).

How the narrative of the fight against organised crime is used to capture the state? Find out in the latest BCSP analysis.

It is necessary to increase the mutual trust between the institutions in the region, it was one of the conclusions of the Tink-Tank Forum organized by the Institute for Democracy "Societas Civilis"  in cooperation with the Center for Eastern Studies from Warsaw and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Skopje on 13 and 14 May 2019 in Skopje. Researchers and representatives of civil society and academia from ...