20/09/2025 President
“The struggle against crime and the need for international cooperation are part of the very fabric of political life and of our common European history,” said PACE President Theodoros Rousopoulos on 19 September in Valletta (Malta) at a conference of Ministers of Justice on cross-border cooperation and mutual legal assistance.
Organised under the Malta Presidency of the Committee of Ministers, the conference also provided an opportunity to open for signature a new additional protocol to the Council of Europe Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters.
The President welcomed the fact that the third Protocol adapts procedures to the reality of our digital age, allowing for secure electronic exchange of evidence, hearings by videoconference, and timely interception of communications, “tools that make our co-operation faster and smarter than criminal networks”.
“We stand firmly alongside the intergovernmental sector, giving democratic legitimacy, political impetus and visibility to this essential work,” he added, recalling that the Parliamentary Assembly had welcomed this Protocol in its opinion last May
“Crime knows no borders. And neither must justice,” President Rousopoulos concluded.