News and press releases

From 25 to 29 November, the OSCE Secretariat’s Transnational Threats Department, in co-operation with the French Gendarmerie, the French Ministry of the Interior, and other key institutions, brought participants from the Moldovan General Police Inspectorate, General Inspectorate of the Border Police and the Customs Service to the French Gendarmerie for a study visit focused on canine (K9) capabilities.

On 29 November, the OSCE Transnational Threats Department organized a workshop on cyber incident classification for 14 cyber security policy and technical experts comprising 6 men and 8 women in Chisinau.

The Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities (OCEEA) brought 19 young innovators and start-uppers from the Western Balkans to Graz, Austria from November 27 to 29 to participate in the European Young Innovator’s (EYI) festival.

In November 2024, the General Prosecutor’s Office and the Financial Monitoring Agency of Kazakhstan hosted two specialized training sessions on the criminal use of virtual assets and blockchain technology. Organized by the OSCE in collaboration with national agencies, these workshops underscored the importance of mitigating money laundering risks and enhancing investigative capacities in the digital financial realm.

From 25 to 28 November, the OSCE’s Transnational Threats Department and the Border Troops and Customs Committee of Uzbekistan held a national training course for border and customs officers to identify suspected foreign terrorist fighters and other criminals at border crossings.

The 2024 European Parliament elections were genuinely competitive, with fundamental freedoms respected. The elections were run professionally and effectively, and the bodies administering them enjoyed a high level of confidence. Aspects of electoral legislation needing further review related primarily to insufficient efforts to involve under-represented groups to form a fully inclusive parliament, differences in voting and candidacy rights across Member States that created unequal conditions for universal suffrage, disinformation and instances of political violence and threats during the campaign both against politicians and journalists, an absence of provisions allowing both citizen and international observers to access the process, and limited transparency and scope of campaign finance regulations.

BELGRADE, 28 November 2024 – The OSCE Mission to Serbia awarded the 2024 Person of the Year award to Ivana Stevanović, Executive Director of the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation, Veran Matić, President of Association of Independent Electronic Media and member of the Permanent Working Group for Safety of Journalists, and Nemanja Nenadić, Program Director of Transparency Serbia at a ceremony held in Belgrade today.