Last week,
Frontex and OSCE met online to exchange views on the prevention of document
fraud in South Eastern Europe.
The meeting
gathered 30 participants representing international and regional organisations,
as well as national authorities from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.
During the
meeting, participants reaffirmed the strategic role of document checks both for
the borders control and combatting cross-border crime, also in view of the
recent surge in forged documents connected with COVID-19.
The experts
set up a list of minimum recommended capabilities in document checks at border
control. This was a follow-up to the recommendations issued jointly by ICMPD,
INTERPOL, IOM, Frontex, OSCE, UNODC and others during a conference on document
checks held in 2019.
Experts
from the Frontex Centre of Excellence for Combating Document Fraud stressed
that cooperation between international, regional and national stakeholders is
crucial to effectively fight this crime.
The OSCE’s
POLIS platform, a workspace specifically designed to share information and
collaborate on documents in a protected environment, was presented during the
meeting. It will serve give the participating organisations and competent
authorities the possibility to contribute to the list of minimum recommended
capabilities in document checks in border control.