SCOPE – Fighting migrant Smuggling by establishing Common Operational Partnerships in Europe with third countries

2026-07-22

The aim of “SCOPE” is to combat criminal organisations smuggling irregular migrants via Turkey (TR) and the Western Balkan (WB) route towards the EU. By establishing Common Operational Partnerships (COPs) with Turkey and the transit countries on the WB route, the fight against these crime groups will be more effective and sustainable providing better results in the identification of High Value Targets (HVT). SCOPE is focusing on the main two modi operandi: Organised Crime Groups (OCG) providing irregular migrants with false or falsified documents to travel unhidden by attempting to pass official border controls and OCGs smuggling migrants in concealments, putting their lives at risk. In order to be able to do this even in a more effective way, SCOPE is therefore taking up a “whole route” approach starting from Turkey over the Western Balkan route. To successfully reach this aim, the applicants (DE, FR, BG), TR and ME and the further WB partners will jointly: - build up a common awareness of these main two modi operandi. - build up trust, knowledge and skills and necessary equipment. - focus also on the financial aspects within joint investigations with the aim to seize and recover criminal assets. - build up on the established joint investigation team of Federal Police and LKA Berlin regarding 20.000 stolen DE blank residence permits (up to date forged by a forgery printshops in Istanbul). These investigations shall be upgraded into a JIT between DE, BG and TR, supported by Eurojust and Europol. SCOPE brings together police and prosecutors and makes JITs an ordinary and frequently used kind of joint investigations between EU MS, TR and WB. The knowledge, training and purchased equipment gained by this project will lead to lasting capacities and structures and therefore a permanent cooperation network, involving Europol, Eurojust and EMPACT. Arrests and prosecutions of HVT, seizure and confiscation of financial means will lead to less operability of the OCGs.

Germany

2025-10-01