According to the European Commission, an illicit firearm trafficking has been directly responsible for at least 10,000 firearms-related deaths in the EU over the past decade. Terrorists and different extremist groups are using illicit firearms to carry out attacks and the use of firearms is a significant destabilization factor in the European Union and the neighbouring regions.
Danube region is a relevant region in that sense, since the Western Balkan countries remain a key source of illicit arms, smuggled by organized crime networks through the Danube region and Schengen Area in the EU. The EU has in the last three years significantly reinforced their efforts to systematically limit the smuggling of arms originating from the Western Balkans. Nevertheless, the shortcomings still exist.
CEP project started in May 2015 with a comprehensive needs assessment analysis. Second phase of the project is a two-day seminar, which brought together 36 representatives from the Danube region criminal police and justice sector as well as European Commission, Europol, Eurojust, UNODC, South East Europe Firearms Experts Network (SEEFEN), European Firearms Experts (EFE), DCAF and other. Large part of the seminar was devoted to the discussions in the working groups on how the improve the regional and international cooperation among the rule of law practitioners in the Danube region and boost support by the international agencies, organisations and numerous networks in this regard.
The seminar produced a set of concrete recommendations to be distributed among the participants and be further used for future actions at the EU and state level. Project is implemented in significant partnership with the Ministry of the Interior and Criminal Police of the Republic of Slovenia and 90% financed by the European Union, namely the EU Strategy for the Danube Region – START Fund. In the last phase of the project, CEP will create a comprehensive report on the subject to be used by the policy makers upstream and downstream the Danube River in order to improve the situation in the field of illicit trafficking of firearms in the EU and its neighbourhood. The final report will be prepared in cooperation with the project partners: Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, Centre for Security Studies from Bosniaand Herzegovina and Centre for Monitoring and Research from Montenegro.
