The Conference of the Parties to the CETS n° 198 held its eighth plenary meeing in Strasbourg from 25 to 26 October 2016.
At this meeting, the Conference of the Parties, inter alia :
- heard an address, at the opening of the Plenary, by Mr Jan Kleijssen, Director of Information Society and Action against Crime;
- welcomed the ratification of the Convention by France and Turkey and the recent signature by Germany, and invited all Council of Europe Member States which have not done yet to accede to the Convention;
- discussed the draft assessment reports on Armenia and Belgium and decided to adopt them, subject to the changes agreed during the Plenary discussion;
- took note of the follow-up reports by Poland and Croatia and invited Poland to provide an updated follow-up report at the next COP meeting;
- amended its Rules of Procedure on the basis of a proposal elaborated in May 2016 by the ad hoc Working Group established to that effect;
- invited the Bureau to elaborate a proposal for the revision of the questionnaire for evaluations, with a view to avoid any duplication with the 5th round of mutual evaluations of the FATF and MONEYVAL;
- heard a presentation from the Secretariat on the survey of “Gathering examples of cases of the use or implementation of CETS 198’s provisions”;
- adopted the parts of the COP mutual legal assistance template on “procedures for search, asset tracing and seizure” and “procedures for confiscation and recovery of confiscated assets”.
For the remaining parts, the Conference decided to apply the silent procedure on the basis of documents circulated by the Secretariat.
Reports adopted will be made available shortly, in accordance with the COP’s publication policy.
