thank you mr posselt for your question on a very important subject
cross-border police cooperation with countries which are neighbours of the european union is primarily a competence of the member states
however the european union supports bilateral cooperation between the member states and ukraine mainly through the operation of europol
on four december two thousand and nine an agreement on strategic cooperation between europol and ukraine was signed that will allow coordination of the work to fight against international organised and serious crime and terrorism
however the strategic agreement does not allow the exchange of personal information on suspects
that can only be exchanged with countries who have concluded an operational agreement with europol and before such an agreement can be concluded ukraine needs to adopt a law on personal data protection and to ratify the nineteen eighty-one council of europe convention on the protection of individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data and its protocol
this is part of a broader commission priority to see ukraine establish a personal data protection regime in line with european standards
that would allow the establishment of an actual independent data protection supervision authority which could be supported by technical and expert assistance from the eu
the eu also supports financial police cooperation with ukraine through a twinning project increasing the capacity of the ukrainian police and the european union border assistance mission eubam
and last year eubam with the cooperation of frontex with olaf and the south-east european cooperation initiative supported the nikoniy joint border control operation to improve cooperation between the ukrainian and the moldovan police forces in fighting cross-border crime and irregular migration
