The joint EU – Council of Europe CyberEast project, started on 20 June 2019, is aiming, among other objectives, to ensure continuous training of law enforcement, prosecution and judiciary on matters of cybercrime and electronic evidence.

Considering the need to ensure proper organization of such training in project countered, the Cybercrime Programme Office of the Council of Europe (Bucharest, Romania) has recently completed series of assessment visits to each Eastern Partnership country, aiming to address institutional setup, capacities, competencies and training needs of cybercrime units, as well as interagency cooperation gaps and opportunities.

These visits examined the situation on the ground not only in terms of existing training institutions, programmes and methodology, but also aimed to establish a network of contacts with training institutions and to also address interagency cooperation gaps and opportunities for cybercrime units in the Eastern Partnership region.

The Assessment Visits were held on the following dates:

3-5 September 2019 – Kyiv, Ukraine

9-10 September 2019 – Yerevan, Armenia

12-13 September 2019 – Baku, Azerbaijan

16-17 September 2019 – Tbilisi, Georgia

24-25 September 2019 – Minsk, Belarus

1-2 October 2019 – Chisinau, Moldova

The findings of these visits will be reflected in the Inception Report of the project, which will be further used for designing first responder, specialized law enforcement, introductory and advanced judicial training programmes in each of the Eastern Partnership states.