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Minister, excellences, ladies and gentlemen,

It is my pleasure to welcome you this evening so that we can mark five years since the Cybercrime Programme Office opened here in Bucharest.

Some of you in this room will remember very well how that came about:

The 2013 meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Expert Group on Cybercrime; the broad agreement reached on the need for capacity building as a means to fight it; and the subsequent offer by the Government of Romania to host a specialised office that would do just that, right here in this city.

We were confident that it would be a success because we already had behind us ten years of excellent co-operation with the Romanian authorities on cybercrime matters: co-operation with the Ministry of Justice; the Prosecution Service on Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT); and the Romanian National Police.

Several people require special mention in that regard:

• Ms Cristina Schulman, from the Ministry of Justice and now Chair of the Cybercrime Convention Committee
• Ms Ioana Albani, Deputy Head of DIICOT
• Mr Virgil Spiridon, former Deputy Chief of the Romanian National Police and now Head of Operations for the Cybercrime Programme Office
• And Mr Stelian Stoian, Romania’s former Ambassador to the Council of Europe, who played a key role in helping to move forwards from that co-operation and deliver a practical plan to locate the Programme Office in Romania’s capital – because of these people, and the extraordinary dedication of the talented staff who have worked here over the past five years, I am happy to confirm that this decision was a good one.

For proof, look at the results:

The Budapest Convention on Cybercrime is the guide for domestic legislation and the framework for international co-operation, not just for cybercrime, but for all offences involving electronic evidence – and not just for Europe, but for the wider world too.

But a great deal of its reach and success has stemmed from the hard work done in the Bucharest office.

Many countries have become Parties to the Treaty after undergoing capacity-building activities provided by staff here.

Public-private co-operation against cybercrime has been enhanced thanks to your expertise.

And, today, law enforcement authorities carry out more successful domestic and international operations against cybercriminals, and criminal justice authorities are better equipped to search for – and to seize – criminal money on the internet due to the training and projects that you have run.

This is just a snapshot of what you have achieved, but it is a bright and colourful picture.

Of course your mission is far from complete.

There are already so many online attacks every year, endangering human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

But as technology advances, experts predict that cybercrime will continue to change and grow too.

With billions of people online and connected devices in use, any type of crime may involve electronic evidence.

This means that an effective criminal justice system demands that all judges, prosecutors and police will require basic skills’ training at the very least – and that all criminal justice institutions will need, more than ever, to co-operate not just at the domestic and international levels, but with the private sector too.

So the capacity-building challenges are immense – but so is the shared determination of our Bucharest team – and so too is the ultimate prize: stopping cybercrime where possible and solving it where it occurs.

This makes the support of many organisations represented here tonight so very important.

At the Council of Europe we are grateful to the European Union for its co-funding of the joint projects we run together – and we are grateful also for the voluntary contributions made by a number of other Parties to the Budapest Convention.

Together, we have ensured five years of success for the Cybercrime Office in Bucharest – and, together, we will ensure many more to come.

Thank you.