Workshop of the CEPA National Liaison Offices on 11.02.2020 in Vienna
In accordance with a decision of the CEPA Board, efforts will be made in 2020 to have the qualifications obtained in the CEPA main course allocated in the Austrian National Qualifications Register (NQR) in order to complete the course with a certificate.
For this reason, a workshop was held in Vienna on 11 February 2020 by representatives of the National Liaison Offices of the CEPA. At this workshop a draft guideline for the acquisition of such a qualification was developed. In particular, the description of the qualification, the design of the training in terms of access requirements, duration, teachers, qualification assurance, etc. and the design of the final examination in terms of examination content, evaluation criteria, examiners, result evaluation, award of certificate, etc. were developed and formulated.
This guideline should be the basis for the submission of the qualification. Further work on this will be done by the Austrian National Liaison Office in close coordination and further working meetings with the National Liaison Offices of the other CEPA countries.
It is planned to submit the qualification in 2020.
Course instructors' conference for the CEPA Special Course 2020
From 28 to 30 January 2020 the course instructors' conference for the 26th CEPA Special Course 2020 took place at the Bavarian Police Training Institute (BPFI) in Ainring/Germany.
The course instructors and border police experts from the seven CEPA countries planned the schedule and content of this CEPA training course, which will take place in Michalovce, Ljubljana, Deggendorf and Budapest.
The CEPA Special Course will last four weeks and will accommodate 24 participants in total. The participants will be sent from the seven CEPA countries. The course duration of four weeks requires that two CEPA countries will be responsible for the content at each of three course locations. Since the course will be ceremonially concluded in Budapest last week, the course content and the programme will be planned by Hungary alone.
The course will open on 07.09.2020 in Michalovce/Slovakia and end on 02.10.2020 in Budapest. During this time the participants will travel continuously from one location to another. In the next few weeks the special course will be advertised for application in the individual countries.
In the course of the course, experts from the CEPA countries will present the participants with the latest trends and methods for combating border police crime. International and regional cooperation will be the main focus. Current illegal migration will also be a special focus of this course. Technical and new measures in border surveillance will round off the programme.
Technical seminar "Darknet Undercover operations"
In the time from 04th - 07th November 2019 a CEPA technical seminar with the title "Darknet undercover operations" took place in Bratislava / Slovakia.
Due to the great interest, the organizers received more participants than was generally planned. A total of 29 participants from all CEPA countries took part in this training. According to the feedback of the seminar participants the event was very instructive.
Mr. Ivan Bacigal from the Criminal Investigation Department of the Police Headquarters of the Slovak Republic made high demands on the technical equipment of the course room. The IT room in the Academy of the Police Corps in Bratislava was additionally equipped to provide practical working conditions for a specific workshop. The seminar participants were already divided into working groups on the first day.
The seminar was opened by Rector Lucia Kurilovska and the Director of the Criminal Investigation Department Mr. Stanislav Španko. The first day was devoted to "theoretical" preparation and exchange of experience. During the second day a case study in the "Darknet environment" was realized. On the last day the results were presented.
The high level of teaching content was ensured by speakers and experts from police practice, lecturers from the computer company ESET and lecturers from the Slovak Prosecutor General's Office.
Special journal "25 years CEPA special course"
On the occasion of the 25th CEPA Specialty Course 2019, which ended on 11 October 2019 in Vienna, this CEPA Special Journal was published.
With a few words and pictures, this special journal reminds of
CMEPA special courses for 25 years.
Printed copies are sent by the National Liaison Offices or the CEPA Central Coordination Office to police stations or police officers on request.
CEPA Activities 2020
The activities of the Central European Police Academy for the year 2020 were completed.
They were defined at the meeting of the CEPA Board of Trustees from 11 to 13 June 2019.
The CEPA training courses listed in the Catalogue of Activities 2020 were adopted by the CEPA Board of Directors at its meeting in Vienna on 10 October 2019.
In 2020 there will again be the seven-week CEPA main course "Prevention and Combating of Internationally Relevant Crime" as well as the four-week CEPA special course "Cross-border Cooperation in Compensation Measures and Border Police Tasks". Specialist seminars on criminal and border police topics will also be held.
The Central Coordination Office requests both the decision-makers and all other responsible persons in the CEPA member countries for active support in the implementation of all CEPA activities. In particular, they may also ensure that the courses / seminars are put out to tender in their own country in good time so that the nomination of the most suitable participants in terms of their professional and personal qualifications and in accordance with the CEPA selection criteria is possible.
CEPA organized a hospitation in the Ukraine
From 22 to 26 October 2019, an Austrian crime scene photographer visited at a workshop, organized by the European Union Advisory Mission (EUAM) in Lviv (Ukraine).
The purpose of the visit was to intensify cooperation and exchange experiences in the field of crime scene photography.
A total of 28 Ukrainian crime scene investigators took part in this workshop and gained an insight into the technical nuances of an SLR digital camera and all relevant techniques used by Austrian crime scene photographers.
Engagement, personal responsibility and sense of responsibility in crime scene photography were worked out and the practical added value of such an exchange of experiences was rated as very high. During numerous practical exercises the knowledge about crime scene photography could be deepened and extended by intensive exchange of experiences.
CEPA Journal 02 2019
The CEPA journal issue 02 2019 was published on the subject of "Technical aids for border surveillance".
Printed copies are sent by the National Liaison Offices or the Central Coordination Office of CEPA to police stations or police officers on request.
The Central coordination Office of the CEPA would like to thank all authors.
25th CEPA Special Course - a success story
On 11 October 2019, the graduates of the 25th CEPA Special Course 2019 in Vienna celebrated the completion of their advanced training at the Security Academy in the Federal Ministry of the Interior. In addition to the Austrian Minister of the Interior, Dr. Wolfgang Peschorn, the Hungarian State Secretary for Public Administration in the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, Dr. Laszlo Felkai, took part in the anniversary event in Vienna.
"CEPA is a success story that shows how important joint work and, above all, joint training across borders are. Not only are our problems similar, our goal must also be a common one: The goal of a safe home for all Europeans", said Interior Minister Wolfgang Peschorn on 11 October 2019 at the anniversary ceremony for graduates of the 25th CEPA Special Course in Vienna. In his speech, the Hungarian State Secretary mentioned the importance of CEPA with its training measures: "An excellent instrument of international police cooperation is the series of training measures to organise joint events in this field".
The four-week special course with 24 participants, which takes place every autumn, takes place at different locations in the member states and offers practice-oriented advanced training at a high level on the central topic "Cross-border cooperation in compensatory measures and border police tasks".
The Central European Police Academy can look back on a successful past. As early as 1991, the Hungarian and Austrian police authorities worked together to create a joint, goal-oriented training programme for police officers. In 1993, the Central European Police Academy was created as a result of a multilateral agreement. More and more states saw the great added value in joint further training and participated in it. The background to this was political, economic, social and technological developments that led to a rapid increase in international, transnational (serious) crime in Europe, often in the context of organised crime (OC).
Finally, on 22 May 2001, the responsible ministers of Germany, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria signed a joint declaration, providing a secure basis for cooperation. A total of 550 police officers from the seven MEPA countries have completed the MEPA Special Course in the past 25 years.
This year's workshop dealt with "Digitisation in Police Work", the results of which the participants of the 25th CEPA Special Course 2019 will present to an audience of experts before the presentation of the decrees in the Moroccan barracks in the ballroom. This topic also shows the topicality that CEPA has been offering for over 25 years in this training event.
Alumni meeting for OC-course graduates of the years 2015 and 2016 in Budapest
Eighteen graduates of the two CEPA-OC courses from Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, Slovenia and Hungary, had the opportunity to meet again between the 17th and 20th September 2019 at the International Training Centre in Budapest.
The OC-Courses are the English language version of the well-established CEPA Main Courses. The CEPA won the grants of the European Commission for organizing of both OC-Courses. They offered the opportunity to attend the Main Course for the English-speaking police officers in Central Europe, too.
The Deputy Director of the International Training Centre, Ms Colonel Emese Horváczy, opened the event.
The goals of the seminar were to update the knowledge and information on OC-related crimes, to get to know the new offender-specific elements and specific forms of perpetration, and to highlight new methods and tools in the combating and prevention of OC.
One of the main goals of the seminar, according to the motto of the CEPA, was the exchange of practical experience and knowledge and the refreshment of the foreign language skills of the participants.
During the round three working days, the participants listened in a very good seminar atmosphere to the lectures of the speakers - who were mostly the participants of the seminar, i.e. course graduates - about the challenges of combating crime, international criminal police cooperation and the related tasks and solutions.
The range of topics was particularly wide and the participants got to know new phenomena and forms of crime. Particularly interesting were the lectures on the "super recogniser", on trafficking in human beings and corruption cases, further the visiting at the Hungarian Banknote Printing Shareholding Company.
In their evaluation sheets, participants argued that alumni events should also be held in the future, as the network of course graduates is a particularly good and efficient form of international criminal police cooperation.
The 25th CEPA Special Course was opened in Holešov/CZ
From 16 September to 11 October 2019 the 25th CEPA Special Course will take place. The course will be held at four locations in the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia and Austria.
On 16 September 2019 this course on "Cross-border cooperation in compensatory measures and border police tasks" was opened in Holešov/CZ by Mr Martin Novotný, Deputy Head of the Police School in Holešov.
The representative of the Central Coordination Office of CEPA in Austria, Chief Inspector Johannes Tober, welcomed the participants and thanked the organisers of the first course week from the Czech Ministry of the Interior and the Police School in Holešov. The necessity of this training, which is unique in Europe in this way and on this subject, was mentioned.
The 23 participants from the CEPA countries will be presented in 4 weeks at locations in the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia and Austria the working methods of the police units in the individual CEPA countries in the field of border surveillance. Speakers from Slovakia, Switzerland and Hungary, together with national speakers from the course locations, will give lectures on border police tasks.
The course graduates will also get to know operational procedures in the individual CEPA states in the course of excursions and practical exercises.
Several workshops will be held on the subject of "Digitisation in the performance of (border) police tasks". At the end of the course on 11 October 2019 in Vienna, participants will present the results of their workshop work to a panel of experts.