The 57th COLPOFER* Conference was held in Paris at UIC Headquarters on 8 and 9 November 2012 at the invitation of French Railways (SNCF).
The session was chaired by Didier Schwartz, Chairman of the COLPOFER group and also Director of Security at SNCF. He underlined the role played by COLPOFER in fostering cooperation at operational level.
The topics presented during this session were as follows:
- Feedback on experience from cooperation during the London Olympics 2012
- Cooperation between FS Group and Bundespolizei in the freight transport of valuable goods
- Case study of international cooperation with authorities
- Analysis of cooperation between networks in operational management of security
- Review of ongoing and future working groups:
- Protection against terrorist activities
- Fraud / Ticket Forgery
- Freight traffic
- Anti-Social behaviour
The actions decided for further cooperation were:
- To involve the chiefs of security operation centres during the next General Assembly of COLPOFER to facilitate their cooperation during big events
- To share between the members a common schedule of big events at European level
- To develop a network of experts for pre-operational exchange of information
- To add an item on metal theft at each COLPOFER conference: as part of the decided to improve cooperation between COLPOFER and the security platform, UIC made a proposal to produce periodic reports on work undertaken by the UIC working group on Metal Theft.
Daniel Geraskov presented the current set of security issues related to European rail transport policy on behalf of CER. He highlighted the 2nd joint letter by CER, COLPOFER, EIM, Railpol, UIC and UITP sent to DG MOVE on 5 October 2012 requesting stakeholder participation in both the Advisory Group for Land Transport Security and the Stakeholder Advisory Group on Land Transport Security. He also mentioned the future CER / UIC common Rail Security Charter (a first draft of which has already been provided by the UIC security division).
The representative of the European Commission Ivan Sorensen gave detailed information on the creation of both the Advisory Groups on Land Transport Security that shall facilitate the exchange of best practices aimed at creating a common European regulation for rail security.
Lastly, MH Bonneau presented the progress of on-going FP7 European Research projects: PROTECTRAIL (The Railway-Industry Partnership For Integrated Security of Rail Transport), RESTRAIL (Reduction of suicides and Trespasses on railway property) and SECRET (Protection of railway infrastructure against EM attacks). MH Bonneau also gave information on the proposals in progress or being prepared for the 6th call of the FP7 programme on Transport and Security.
*COLPOFER: in 1981, a number of western European railway companies and law enforcement authorities founded a collaborative body named COLPOFER (French: Collaboration des services de police ferroviaire et de sécurité), constituting an independent special group of UIC in order to boost their cooperation on security issues.
