Opening Ceremony - Vladimir Lopatin

IRU XXVIII^th World Congress
Under the Patronage of the President of Romania, Ion Iliescu

Opening Ceremony

Vladimir Lopatin
Deputy Director State Prosecutor Office
Research and Development Institute, Russian Federation

On priorities when counteracting terrorism and ensuring security in transport

1. Rate of the crime growth outpaces increase of population all over the world and significantly surpasses efforts of the states in counteracting crime. Over the last 30 years more than 10 thousand terrorist acts were committed in the world, their growth over the last 15 years in different regions of the world made up 50-60% and in the RF over the last five years the growth of the registered crimes under article 205 of the Criminal Code of the RF (terrorism) was 10 times: from 32 in 1997 to 327 in 2001. Besides, if in the seventies 80% of terrorist actions were aimed against the property and 20% against people, in the nineties the ratio became 30% and 70% respectively. The rise of social danger of terrorism has taken place and is under way along with low level of crime revelation. For example, in Russia in the years 1997-2000 only 18 people were convicted under article 205 of the Criminal Code of the RF (9% of the registered crimes) whereas terrorist actions reached their aims in 80-90% of cases. Terrorists are better organized and reach their purposes more effectively than state antiterrorist organizations.

2. Transport fulfilling the most important social and economic functions ensuring single economic space, owing to its transnational nature, became at the same time either the environment of the “business” activities of the international terrorist and other criminal groupings or the object of gangster attacks. The scale and character of their criminal activities is very wide and methods are diverse: from capture of airplanes with hostages and gangster attacks on the drivers of TIR trucks to drugs traffic, modern slave-trade, sophisticated schemes of evading  state taxes and levies. These activities result in enormous economic damage, social, political and moral losses for all the society levels. taking in the account an increase in the share of harmful goods transportation, use of contraband by transnational criminal groupings as the source of funding terrorism, ensuring of security and prevention of crimes in transport becomes one of the priority issues of governmental and public activities.

3. Combating terrorism is not the final purpose (combat for combat), it is a condition for safe development of the society and state, including in the sphere of transport and trade development in all the regions of the world.

4. It becomes evident today that main efforts in counteracting crime should be aimed not at criminal repressions (as it was before) but at its prevention. Side by side with law-enforcement authorities other state agencies and also non-state transport structures, without which this work will be ineffective and will not bring the expected results, should become the main participants of activities for prevention of crime in transport. Prevention of terrorism and contraband (first of all of arms and drugs) as one of the main sources of its funding is necessary and possible through joint actions of all the state bodies with support of civil society, science and business institutions both at the national and international, including CIS, levels. Under new conditions new rules of interaction between the authorities and business are needed, rules that allow to establish partnership to solve a common problem - counteracting crime, including in transport.

5. The high level advisory group on security in the RF transport with participation of plenipotentiary representatives of the RF Procurator’s Office, Energy, Transport and Communications Committee of the RF Duma, RF Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Railways of Russia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the RF, Ministry of Economic Development of the RF, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RF, State Customs Commission of the RF, Trade-and-Industry Chamber of the RF, International Road Transport Union (according to the number of the signatories to this memorandum the group can be called “The Group of Twelve”), that was established on May 20, 2002 in Russia can serve as an example of such interaction. This initiative was supported at the recent meeting of the CIS Coordinating Transport Conference (CTC) in the Chisinau Declaration on Security in Transport adopted by all the Ministers of Transport of the CIS member countries on May 27, 2002. The Declaration was disseminated as an official document in the European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT). It is possible and expedient to create such mechanisms of cooperation both in other countries and at the interstate level not duplicating the work of the correspondent antiterrorist state structures but supplementing them and interacting with them.

6. Among the priority tasks of this high level group (“Group of 12”) the following could be singled out:

• analysis of legislation in the field of ensuring security and combatting terrorism in transport and development of recommendations for its bringing to conformity with the standards of international law;
• preparation and issue of a White Book “Terrorism and Security in Transport in Russia” with the subsequent dissemination of this publication in the CIS and EU;
• development of both global strategy of ensuring security in transport and concrete mechanisms of its realization in individual transport modes (for example a list of suspicious operations; when running into them, national associations of  road carriers are obliged not only to refuse to award (to withdraw) TIR carnet but to inform the relevant law-enforcement authorities);
• search for the ways and working out mechanisms for optimal solving of the existing problems in ensuring security when developing transport communications.

7. One of such urgent problems is establishment of visa free regime (or regime of professional visa) for international road carriers similar to the rights of seamen and pilots when performing international transportations. Taking into account  integration processes that are taking place in the world and role of  transport in them it is evident that the solution must be found.

As a step-by-step variant of solution for this problem the following measures could be considered:

introduction of visa-free regime for international road carriers of the CIS member states in the whole space of the Commonwealth countries;

introduction of visa-free regime for the RF international road carriers for Kaliningrad region so that pilot model of relations for the professional road carriers when performing transportations CIS-EU could be worked through;

introduction of the visa-free regime for the international road carriers of the CIS and EU member states in the whole space of the Commonwealth and European Union countries;

introduction of visa-free regime for international road carriers all over the world through adoption of a relevant UN Convention.

Problem of visa free regime for the Kaliningrad region of Russia is a pan-European problem and not only of Russia. European Union in the process of its expansion has to promote integration and unification of all the Europe and not to divide the continent and Russia into separate parts. To ignore standards of international law and national interests of other countries including Russia, the accumulated international experience of solving such problems (in America: Alaska (USA) -Canada, in Europe: Liechtenstein - Switzerland - Austria; Monaco - France) means to pursue the policy of double standards that is unacceptable for ensuring security in the interests of development of each and all.

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