Brussels, 29/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Union is progressively providing itself with instrument to fight against organised crime, but the EU Member States cannot be satisfied with co-operating between themselves, they must also accept to cooperate with third countries, underlined Commissioner Antonio Vitorino, at the Conference on European Union and United States strategies in the fight against international organised crime, which took place last Wednesday in Ghent (Belgium).
The EU must firstly cooperate with candidate countries, the fight against organised crime being "one of the priorities of the accession process". Though also with the United States, with which it has "closely co-operated these last months on a certain number of international legal instrument of great importance, such as the United Nations Convention on Transnational Organised Crime". It is also important, added the Commissioner, to continue the bilateral EU-United States cooperation "which has proven itself to be very useful to exchange information on activities underway in the field of justice and home affairs. We must identify our common aims, discuss way in which to resolve problems linked to the differences between our legislation or our practices, and decide on common projects, such as the follow-up to the Vienna Conference on cybercrime or the new information campaign on trafficking of women". Finally the Commissioner said he was "perfectly aware" that the United States expects rapid progress on cooperation with Europol or even reciprocal legal assistance.