During last year’s 17th EPAC/EACN Annual Professional Conference in Lisbon a working group: „How can POB organisations monitor the authorities of police forces in respect of the balance between collective security and individual rights during mass meetings/events“ was set up.
On 20 April 2018 the Standing Police Monitoring Committee from Belgium and the General Police Inspectorate from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, hosted participants of Portugal, France, Spain, Azerbaijan, Ireland, Finland, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and Belgium for the first working group meeting in Brussels.
After the participants were welcomed by Johanna Erard, Chairwoman of the standing Committee P, the working group session started with a brief overview of the results of the monitoring enquiry of the Standing Committee P on the “Operational and legal aspects of screening for the Tomorrowland 2017 festival”.
Keynote speaker of the day was Saad Amrani, Chief Commissioner from the Belgian Federal Police who presented a general overview of the “Negotiated management of public space”.
The first working group session ended with an interactive workshop discussing the following topics: the security risks of festival visitors/employees, the need for a legal basis, the need for a risk analysis, screening in national databases, screening in international databases, defining criteria for screening, appeals process, screening practices, adequate quality control in screening assessments and violation of professional secrecy.
The participants of the working group session stressed that they were very interested in receiving best practices from the different POB’s. During a second working group meeting these practices will be exchanged in order to elaborate general guidelines concerning the discussed topics.
Funded by the European Union’s Internal Security Fund-Police