The Council of Europe’s Action against Economic Crime & Cooperation Division organised a brainstorming event in Strasbourg during 15-16 February 2018.  The event brought together more than 40 Council of Europe experts from academia, policy community and practitioners along with the Council of Europe’s Secretariat from relevant specialised services, committees and monitoring structures to discuss and identify issues, challenges and possible solutions in implementing Council of Europe standards through cooperation activities and other possible actions.

Participants discussed the impact of Council of Europe cooperation and their programming when supporting reforms against economic crime and its components (corruption, fraud, organized crime, money laundering, financial crime, terrorism financing, criminally acquired assets), as well as discuss cross-cutting issues such as data protection and international cooperation.

The aim was to identify and prioritise those economic crime-related components that continue to be challenging from the implementation and impact point of view,  while seeking the improvement of delivery of technical assistance and action overall. 

The event held three simultaneous theme workshops: 
1) anti-corruption and good governance;
2)  anti-money laundering and countering of terrorist financing;  and
3) asset recovery and international cooperation on criminal matters. 

The event’s report presenting discussions and ideas exchanged per each theme and proposed recommendations will be feeding an Advisory Paper on improving Action against Economic Crime through Cooperation.   
A follow-up event in the format of a technical meeting will be organised to review and finalise the Advisory Paper.

• Agenda