S.I.R.E.N.E in Croatia: The Winning Proposal by Formez and the Italian Ministry of the Interior

On October 30th, 2008 the Italian Ministry of the Interior and Formez awarded the Twinning Light Project Croatia HR/2006/IB/JH/01TL entitled “Preparing the Croatian Police for the Establishment of the S.I.R.E.N.E. Office”.
Croatia which is a candidate country for European Union membership, has taken the necessary last steps toward full membership which has been scheduled for the end of 2009. Croatia has not yet met all the pre-requisites for becoming the twenty-eighth member state and does not fulfil all European Union standards and regulations on justice, freedom and security.
With regard to the field of security on borders, the afore-mentioned project was proposed with the objective to prepare the Croatian police to the future establishment of the S.I.R.E.N.E. office.
The office originated from an initiative of Germany, France and the 3 Benelux countries in 1995 in order to fulfil the need to control the circulation of people and goods within the Schengen area after frontiers were breached. In 1997, the office was established in Italy, while currently it is present throughout the 27 European countries and shortly, a branch will also be created in Switzerland. S.I.R.E.N.E. intends to assess and collect the data of the crimes committed in the country of pertinence and forward them to the SIS I databank. So, the latter can provide the data to all Schengen countries in order to control and monitor illegal traffic.
In 2009, the new system SIS II will be implemented and started-up as well as more often updated, so as to contain an increased number of data.
The Italian S.I.R.E.N.E. office has been established within the Police Service for International Cooperation of the Italian Ministry for the Interior, and so far has realized various Twinning Light projects in Malta, Slovenia and Lithuania. Thus, owing to the relevant experience gained in the field, the high professional level of the Ministry of the Interior experts and the broad experience of the Formez International Activities Office in administrative Twinning projects, once again Italy has managed to submit a winning proposal.
The project will last for 6 months starting from January 2009 for a total of 100 days of technical assistance and training. The key target is to train the Croatian police for the implementation and finalization of the S.I.R.E.N.E. office through the planning and approval of a Road Map, the realization and adoption of legal and organizational-personnel guide-lines as well as the realization of a plan for rising stakeholders’ awareness through workshops aiming at improving knowledge of the topics developed by the office.