​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.