Ohrid – The Southeast Europe Police Chiefs Association (SEPCA) Annual General Assembly was held within the Presidency of the Republic of Macedonia with this Association. MARRI delegation took part, upon invitation of SEPCA Presidency (Tamara Mugosa, RCD, Selma Mehovic, BORDAIRPOL II Project Manager and Montenegro MPR and Atanas Minov, Macedonia MPR).
The first day of the event was discussed about strengthening the operational cooperation among SEPCA member states, the cooperation of the Association with Europol, as well as the cooperation within Integrative Internal Security Governance (IISG). In this regard the delegations acknowledged the need of reinforcing the position of SEPCA as a strategic point in the police and the security cooperation in SEE Europe and extended a full support for publication of the MIS report and signing of this Letter of Commitment.
About the cooperation with IISG, the SEPCA member countries welcome the partnership with IISG and task the Strategic Board to organize a meeting with the IISG Support Group to determine future activities and modus of developing the cooperation further.
The attended delegations appreciated the support continuously provided by the Ministries of Interior of the Republic of Austria and Italy.
The second General Assembly under the Macedonian Presidency will be held in November 2018, and next SEPCA Presidency will go to the Republic of Moldova.
Second day was dedicated to collaboration in the frame of Berlin Process. On this topic, the presentation had a representative of the Berlin Process UK Summit. This summit will take place on 9-10 July 2018.
In relation with Berlin Process, Director of the MARRI Regional Centre Ambassador Tamara Mugosa stressed the importance of synergies among regional initiatives’ activities, as well as the importance of proactive approach in definition of regional priorities in the area of security before the London Summit. She reiterated that for the first time security will be one of key topics at Berlin Process Summit and that this fact should be considered as valuable opportunity to present regional needs to EU. She also recalled good co-operation between MARRI and SEPCA, by pointing out that two regional initiatives has signed cooperation arrangement in 2008 and created network of the Heads of Border Police that represents the essence of the BORDAIRPOL II Project implemented for the fifth year in a row.