The Cybercrime@EAP III project has completed the first stage of the “Study on mapping current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks of public/private cooperation on cybercrime in the Eastern Partnership region”. Under this stage, assessment teams composed of Council of Europe experts and C-PROC staff visited every country in the Eastern Partnership in the time-frame of March to June 2016, with close participation and support from the project country teams in each country.

Face-to-face meetings and discussions will all relevant stakeholders of the project – criminal justice authorities, telecommunications regulators, Internet service providers and cybersecurity teams – allowed the visiting team to develop country-specific reports, describing current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks regarding public/private cooperation and documenting good practices and initiatives already underway in the region. Draft reports have been already sent to all of the country teams for review and approval.

The review and on-site meetings covered a wide range of topics, including necessary legal frameworks required by the Budapest Convention, safeguards and guarantees in the criminal justice process, regulation of the Internet service providers and informal cooperation mechanisms and practices that make day-to-day cooperation in fighting cybercrime operational.

Next step for this activity is to collate finalized and agreed country reports into the regional study of the state of public/private cooperation on cybercrime in the Eastern Partnership region, expected to be completed by the end of July 2016. The study will be presented to the Cybercrime@EAP III project partners and participants at the Second regional meeting under the project, tentatively scheduled for 19-20 September 2016.