On January 23, 2024, in Sarajevo, the Director of the Service for Foreigners' Affairs, Mr. Žarko Laketa, attended a working meeting to raise awareness of the European multidisciplinary platform for combating criminal threats, EMPACT.
The organizers were the regional project EU Support in strengthening the fight against migrant smuggling and human trafficking in the Western Balkans (EU4FAST) and the department of the recently appointed national EMPACT coordinator in BiH, Danijel Maunaga.
The meeting was attended by representatives of all police bodies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as EU4FAST project collaborators, representatives of the EU Delegation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and representatives of the Italian Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
After the introductory presentation of the EU4FAST project, those present discussed the framework of EMACT and the operational action plan for the period from 2024 to 2025, according to the EUROPOL proposal.
We want to emphasize that the representatives of the EU4FAST project expressed concrete support for the proposal that Bosnia and Herzegovina would be the host country of the Command Coordination Center of the international action "Join Action Days Southeast Europe - JAD SEE" in 2024.
Given that the main goal of the EU4FAST regional project is to prevent and fight against migrant smuggling and human trafficking, hence the Director of the Service for Foreigners' Affairs, Mr. Žarko Laketa, supported the project.
The Service for Foreigners' Affairs in its previous work had a very positive opinion regarding the JAD SEE (Join Action Days Southeast Europe) operation itself, both the operation itself and the operational phase when collecting intelligence data and sharing it.
During the implementation of the EU4FAST project, the partnership with EU member states and its agencies will be strengthened, especially through the active participation of regional authorities in EMPACT.
The EU4FAST project is jointly financed by the European Union, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation, the Italian Ministry of the Interior and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The international consortium implementing the project is led by the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), and also includes the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, the German Federal Police (Bundespolize), the Dutch Center for International Legal Cooperation (CLIC), the French CIVIPOL, the Croatian Ministry of the Interior, the Italian Ministry of the Interior and the Slovenian Ministry of the Interior.
