Mr Lorenzo SALAZAR, Italy 

 

 I’m very honoured to warmly welcome you to the website, which provides the most recent information related to the Council of Europe activities in the field of crime prevention and crime control.

The Council of Europe, in particular through its Steering Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC), sets European standards in a large number of binding and non-binding legal texts, identifies priorities for intergovernmental criminal law cooperation, and implements activities in the fields of criminal law and procedure, criminology, and penology. Our effective intergovernmental cooperation on common and transnational criminal law and policy takes place in the broader European context, covering a full range of relevant areas including tracking, investigation, extradition, sentencing, execution of penal sanctions and measures, and rehabilitation of offenders.

Set up in 1958 (incidentally, the same year I was born), the  was entrusted by the Committee of Ministers with the responsibility of overseeing and coordinating the Council of Europe’s activities in the field of crime prevention and control. The CDPC meets at the Council of Europe headquarters in Strasbourg (France) and identifies priorities for intergovernmental legal cooperation, makes proposals to the Committee of Ministers on activities in the fields of criminal law and penology, and implements these activities.  In addition to its regular meetings, the CDPC organises conferences on specific topics of interest in the criminal law field, including (Informal) Conferences of Ministers of Justice. 

To date, over 40 Criminal law Conventions have been developed under the authority of the CDPC, as well as a large number of Recommendations in areas where it was not possible or necessary to adopt a binding legal instruments.

Many of the high-profile Council of Europe Conventions have been developed under the mandate of the CDPC, including the Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, the Lanzarote Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, the MEDICRIME Convention on the counterfeiting of medical products, the Nicosia Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Property, and, more recently, the Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law. The CDPC continues to provide key legal and technical guidance to many of them.

 Further information about the mandate, current and past activities and publications of the CDPC can be found on its website: www.coe.int/CDPC

 Also worth mentioning among the topical issues of interest and concern in this field on which our Organisation is currently working it are: criminal law challenges posed by artificial intelligence; transnational organised crime; the protection of victims’ rights; combating the smuggling of migrants and, the most recent one, Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference.

 The CDPC is assisted in its activities by two subordinate committees, for which it provides a coordinating, supervising and monitoring role: The Committee of experts on the operation of conventions on cooperation in criminal matters (PC-OC) and the Council for penological cooperation (PC-CP). 

  • The Committee of Experts on the Operation of Conventions on Co-operation in Criminal Matters (PC-OC) is the forum in which, since 1981, experts from member and observer States and international organisations come together to enhance and improve international cooperation in criminal matters and agree on solutions to practical problems encountered in the application of Council of Europe Conventions in this field and in particular extradition, mutual legal assistance and transfer of sentenced persons (List of Conventions)
  • The PC-OC monitors the application of these conventions and proposes new instruments when appropriate.
  • It also produces helpful tools, such as country information, model forms, practical guidelines, etc. for practitioners who deal with these instruments.
  • Further information regarding the functioning and activities of the PC-OC is to be found on its website (www.coe.int/tcj) which is very rich in useful information, tools and documentation for practitioners involved on international co-operation on criminal matters.
  • The Council for Penological Co-operation (PC-CP) is the Committee of experts dealing with the execution of penal sanctions and measures. It drafts common European standards, in particular related to the work of prison and probation services as well as of juvenile justice agencies.
  • A number of important legal instruments have been adopted since the establishment of our Organisation by the Committee of Ministers. They are regularly updated and complemented, based on the revolving case-law of the European Court of Human Rights and the work of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). The most well-known texts are the European Prison Rules, the Council of Europe Probation Rules, the European Rules on community sanctions or measures, the European Rules for juvenile offenders subject to sanctions or measures and recommendations on remand in custody, health care in prison, foreign prisoners, long-term sentences, prison overcrowding, conditional release, electronic monitoring, children with imprisoned parents and restorative justice. All these instruments can be found in this Compendium. Many of them have also been translated into languages other than the two official languages of the Council of Europe.
  • The Council of Europe annual Conferences of the Directors of Prison and Probation Services (CDPPS) bring together the Directors from the 46 Council of Europe member States, as well as from its observer States and from key international organisations like the EU, UNODC, EuroPris, CEP and ICPA.
  • For more than 30 years, the Council of Europe has been collecting and publishing the Annual Penal Statistics (Statistiques Pénales Annuelles du Conseil de l’Europe – SPACE) containing data on prisons and on probation sanctions and measures. These statistics attract a lot of media attention and are well-known worldwide.
  • For more information regarding the above legal instruments, reports, publications and events, please consult the dedicated web site: www.coe.int/prison

I began my term as the new President of the CDPC on 1 January 2026. Despite the challenging times for multilateralism, I firmly believe that fostering and maintaining peaceful relations among our countries, based on mutual trust, requires the effective promotion of the rule of law and the protection of human rights, as set out in the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950 and its Protocols and the CDPC can concretely contribute to achieving this goal.