Spain and France hold High-Level Meeting on Homeland Security in Paris

The Director-General of the Spanish National Police Force, Ignacio Cosidó, and the Director-General of the Spanish Guardia Civil, Arsenio Fernández de Mesa, attended the 3rd France-Spain Homeland Security Strategic Planning and Coordination Committee meeting in Paris together with the police chiefs responsible for the various areas of investigation and judicial policing.

The people in charge of the various security forces in Spain and France sit on this committee in order to coordinate and plan joint action by the services in both countries in the fight against terrorism and organised crime.

The main issues discussed at this bilateral meeting between the two countries were:

• Regarding the fight against national terrorism, the two delegations reaffirmed the absolute need to maintain French-Spanish police cooperation on achieving the definitive eradication of the terrorist group ETA.

• Regarding international terrorism, the importance of combating the radical Jihadist phenomenon was highlighted, particularly in the Sahel region. An agreement was reached to set up a flow of information between the investigation teams in the two countries to provide optimum monitoring of this problem via the Internet.

• Regarding organised crime, discussion took place on the Triennial Action Plan on the Fight against Drugs, which will be signed on Wednesday 10 October by the Home Affairs Ministers of Spain and France, Jorge Fernández Díaz and Manuel Valls, respectively, at the Spain-France Summit in Paris.

• Finally, the issue of migration pressure at the air and sea borders of the two countries was examined. The law enforcement agency directors highlighted the importance of collaboration on illegal migration networks in order to eradicate them.

Decorations

On Thursday, at the residence of the Spanish Ambassador in Paris, Carlos Basterreche, the Director-General of the Spanish National Police Force, Ignacio Cosidó, and the Director-General of the Spanish Guardia Civil, Arsenio Fernández de Mesa, decorated 36 officers of the French National Police Force and the Gendarmerie, as well as representatives of other institutions of the French authorities.

The two directors, who presented decorations from the orders of Police Merit and the Guardia Civil, highlighted "the important and growing police collaboration between the two countries, a cooperation model to be followed by the rest of Europe, of which the officers being decorated today are fine examples".

Furthermore, they emphasised the importance and need to continue strengthening the police cooperation of recent years, which is reflected by the presence of numerous liaison officers on both sides of the border and the European Police Stations.

The European police stations are a stable mechanism for cooperation between the two countries. They are activated during periods of considerable tourist travel or when important events are being held, for which police officers are brought in from the two countries to offer a more effective service to the visiting tourists. They have already produced some excellent results to date.

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