site.btaSofia Hosts Fourth Forum of Balkan Prosecutors General, Focused on Stability, Cross-Border Cooperation

The Fourth Forum of the Prosecutors General of the Balkan States took place in Sofia on Monday with calls for joint efforts and the signing of cooperation agreements aimed at fostering stability and justice across the region. The forum was organized by the Bulgarian prosecution service and attended by Bulgaria's Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov, Justice Minister Georgi Georgiev, acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov, Eurojust President Michael Schmid, the Prosecutor General of Turkiye's Supreme Court of Appeal, Muhsin Senturk, and the European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection, Michael McGrath.

Addressing the forum, Zhelyazkov underscored the importance of multilateral cooperation in law enforcement across the Balkans, highlighting that equal participation and coordinated decision-making are key to addressing the region’s shared challenges. "Multilateral cooperation enables common decisions and coordination to be achieved on an equal footing between participants," Zhelyazkov said. In his words, this edition highlights the significance of international cooperation in effective law enforcement, particularly in regions with a rich historical, political and social heritage, such as the Balkans. The region is a cradle of turbulence and challenges, as well as a place of great opportunities, he added. "When I talk about law enforcement, positive law is the guarantee that rules of conduct will be applied in the best possible way," Zhelyazkov said. 

Sarafov emphasized that the prosecution service is "the backbone of the rule of law in any country". According to him, Bulgaria's prosecution service plays a key role not only in criminal justice but also in protecting the public interest. Sarafov called for the creation of a permanent Balkan prosecutorial platform and a technical team to maintain communication. He also proposed initiatives for experience exchange between Balkan prosecutors, particularly in areas such as corruption, human trafficking, cybercrime, and environmental protection. He stressed the need for concrete proposals to modernize and even harmonize legislation across the region.

Senturk noted that the goal of the chief prosecutors in the Balkans is common: to establish stability, security, and justice in the region. In his words, prosecutors are responsible not only for ensuring that justice is served, but also for maintaining regional stability, defending shared values, and guaranteeing the safety of citizens. Organized crime, terrorism, illegal migration, corruption and cybercrime pose common threats. Developing effective and sustainable regional cooperation is a must for dealing with these threats, Senturk added. He noted that cybercrime is one of the most dynamic and complicated threats that prosecutors have to deal with. Scams, money laundering, illegal cryptocurrency transactions, child exploitation and the financing of terrorism are already occurring in digital spaces and represent a threat to the entire region. Senturk also explained that human trafficking is connected to these digital actions. He added that ecological crimes are a new area that also needs to be considered.

Schmid said that Eurojust will continue to support judicial authorities both within and outside the European Union (EU). He emphasized that Eurojust’s core mission is to facilitate judicial cooperation in cross-border cases, noting that organized crime does not recognize national borders. The Eurojust President pointed out that the topics to be discussed at the forum, including migrant smuggling, terrorism, drug trafficking, environmental crimes, and cryptocurrency-related offences, share a common need for cooperation. In his words, almost every case today has an international dimension, and the challenges faced by different countries are often similar. Schmid underscored that regular cooperation requires a high level of mutual trust and a genuine sense of teamwork, which is why regional meetings like this one are so important. “From personal experience, I know there are countries where closer cooperation is needed simply because colleagues need to work together more frequently, often this applies to countries within the same region,” he said.

McGrath called on all Balkan countries to strengthen their judicial cooperation by concluding, where appropriate, working agreements with Eurojust and the European Public Prosecutor's Office and by ratifying the Council of Europe conventions on mutual assistance in criminal matters. McGrath called on Western Balkan partners to fully implement the European Arrest Warrant and the European Investigation Order and to make full use of the potential of joint investigation teams and the European Judicial Network. The European Commissioner said that Europe faces serious challenges, with crime and criminal networks never having been more digital, cross-border or international. In his words, effective anti-corruption policies are an essential part of the environment necessary for the rule of law, respect for the independence of the judiciary and a free and active civil society. According to him, from next August, Member States will be able to apply the e-Evidence Regulation to request electronic evidence directly across borders. By the end of the year, the Joint Investigation Teams collaboration platform will be available, allowing members, including those from third countries, to exchange evidence securely.

Georgiev said that guaranteeing democratic society requires elimination of corruption pressure and organized crime's activity. "The problems we need to solve are not problems specific to any particular prosecution service office; they are problems and challenges facing the democratic functioning of our societies. In order to ensure and guarantee this, it is necessary to eliminate the pressure of corruption and the activities of organized crime, which, with new technologies and the single European space, are now reaching scales that pose a challenge to each country individually, so there is no need to deal alone with problems that we can handle together, as you have been doing in recent years within the framework of cooperation," Georgiev told the forum guests. He noted that over the past eight months, Bulgarian institutions have carried out a “revolution in criminal law” in connection with the implementation of commitments to remove the country from the gray list for money laundering. Georgiev pointed out that reforms have been made to the concept and regulation of terrorism, expanding liability and providing adequate sanctioning mechanisms for legal entities involved in criminal activity, modernizing the criminal process with regard to crypto assets, and collecting electronic evidence.

The Fourth Forum brought together heads of prosecution services from Southeast Europe and EU partner institutions. It was initiated by the Chief Prosecutors of Bulgaria and Turkiye, with the first event held in Izmir in 2019. Sofia hosted the forum for the second time. The goal is to strengthen established partnerships and cooperation among Balkan prosecutors on criminal law matters, combating cross-border organized crime, illegal migration, and more.