Transatlantic Symposium on Dismantling Transnational Illicit Networks 16-19 May 2011, Lisbon, Portugal

The EU and US organised a joint initiative, bringing together key countries from Latin America and West Africa with the EU, its Member States and North America for a three-day Symposium.
The event addressed the converging organised crime and illicit networks that have become increasingly prominent across the trans-Atlantic region. The event had a practical focus but also sought to generate political will for subsequent international law enforcement cooperation, bringing together close to 300 participants.

Today’s organised crime networks are transnational and trans-regional. They can adapt to the countermeasures taken by individual states or groups of states. The most effective response is therefore to be found at the trans-regional level. The converging threats that the Symposium addressed included: organised crime, drugs, corruption, illicit finance, human trafficking and smuggling and the links between transnational and local crime.

The languages of the Symposium were English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. The co-chairs’ summary of the proceedings of the event are available below. Here you can also find the text of the keynote speeches from US Ambassador Brownfield and Portuguese Secretary of State Cravinho as well as the closing remarks from Tomas Dupla Del Moral, EEAS. The website is also a repository of most of the speeches and presentations given over the 3 days (in original version).