International cooperation on cybercrime and electronic evidence is a difficult and challenging task for criminal justice professionals. The prevalence of cybercrime and challenges in reliably securing electronic evidence across national borders require fast, efficient and meaningful response to both mutual legal assistance and police-to-police requests on the subject. To mitigate these challenges, cooperation under the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime focuses on preservation and production of admissible and reliable electronic evidence that can be used in pre-trial and trial proceedings through all possible and practicable means of cooperation. In this light, having up-to-date knowledge of the legal requirements, proper management and down-to-earth practicalities of such cooperation is crucial for the criminal justice community in the Eastern Partnership states.

The need for specialized training in international cooperation on cybercrime and electronic evidence has been repeatedly highlighted by the country teams participating in the Cybercrime@EAP II project, which aims at strengthening capacities of authorities responsible for international cooperation in cybercrime and electronic evidence, and is implemented by the Council of Europe Cybercrime Programme Office (Bucharest, Romania) within the framework of the Programmatic Cooperation Framework between the European Union and the Council of Europe. The project responded to these requests by designing and rolling out a standard Training Programme on International Cooperation on cybercrime and electronic evidence for the Eastern Partnership countries, focusing on issues of mutual legal assistance, police-to-police cooperation and direct cooperation with multinational service providers. The training program also aims to test in practice application of various manuals, guidelines and templates produced by several capacity building projects of the Council of Europe.

Following development of the course materials, the Training Programme was launched on 6-9 March 2016 in Yerevan with the support and participation of the Armenian project country team and representatives of relevant authorities, such as cybercrime investigators, police officers from 24/7 points of contact under the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, prosecutors specialized in cybercrime and international cooperation, cooperation units from the Ministry of Justice and representatives of the judiciary. The Training Programme will continue throughout months of March to May 2017, covering all six countries of the Eastern Partnership, and aiming, as an ultimate goal, to produce a set of training materials that will be published through the Octopus Cybercrime Community and thus can be further used by other capacity building projects of the Council of Europe and other interested professional communities.

In case of interest to participate in the Training Programme on International Cooperation on cybercrime and electronic evidence, the Cybercrime Programme Office of the Council of Europe would be delighted to answer such inquiries in cooperation with Cybercrime@EAP II project country teams.