FP7-CORE & Cops – Plans with police organizations

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The fourth and last year of FP7-project has started, with a large number of research, innovation, technical and educational activities going on – until the project finalization on 30.4.2018. In this CBRA Blog we elaborate on our ideas to expand CORE outreach towards European and Global police organizations.

 

As many of you CBRA Blog readers are aware, FP7-CORE project focuses on improving the security of global supply chains, while facilitating the cross-border trade transactions and logistics movements to the maximum. Main part of the remaining work in CORE is performed in dozen+ tangible supply chain security pilots and demonstrations, one example being “enhancing governmental agency cooperation in flower trade lane from Kenya to the Netherlands – with the explicit aim to reduce trafficking in prohibited goods, to minimize tax fraud as well as to mitigate the risk of plant diseases” – thanks to improved national and international information exchange, physical inspection and other cooperation between police, customs and phytosanitary agencies.

One of the areas we here at CBRA plan to explore in more detail during the next 11 months is about “Police relevant CORE outcomes and results”. Supply chains are more and more commonly seen as key elements of critical infrastructures, thus calling for “Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP)” measures. Next to the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP), this can be linked all the way to the recent United Nations Security Council resolution UNSC 2341, which discusses, among other topics, the necessity of “…capacity-building and technical assistance to protect critical infrastructure from terrorists…”. Certainly, good potential for the CORE-project to make police relevant contributions, both from European as well as global perspectives!

So far during years 2016 and 2017 we have had several discussions about CORE (plus more) with the following European police networks and organizations:

Following these preliminary discussions, the main objective of CBRA is to convert key results and findings from the CORE-project into “police relevant learning materials” – for example “global supply chains 101 for police officers”, “how to enhance cooperation between police and customs agencies”, and, “how can law enforcement officers benefit from trusted trade lanes”, just to name but few examples. More specifically linked to the last example: “the CORE collaborative chain control approach in the trusted trade lane supervision concept allows for more targeted and effective combatting of tax fraud and other trade related crimes” is likely to raise high interest among broader police audiences. We plan to pilot such materials during October 2017 – March 2018, before publishing the final versions for European and worldwide police use in April 2018.

Last but not least, we have a continuous interaction with the “global INTERPOL family”, when it comes to exploring CORE dissemination and exploitation among the global police communities. As a concrete example, Mr. Mike Ellis of CBRA (former head of illicit trade at INTERPOL), will host a CBRA-CORE booth at the INTERPOL World, Singapore, 4-7.7.2017, with the primary purpose of disseminating police relevant CORE brochures, https://www.interpol-world.com/supporting-organizations . In addition, CBRA is working closely with the INTERPOL International IP Crime Investigators College, and their e-learning platform, http://www.iipcic.org/ .

To summarize, CBRA is looking forward to tightening CORE-cooperation with various police organizations – and of course any national police agencies who might have interest on crime prevention in global supply chains. In case your agency is interested to learn more, please contact us by email ( cbra@cross-border.org ) , or, by phone ( +41765890967) !

 

In Lausanne, 24.5.2017, CBRA Blog by Dr. Juha Hintsa