Acting Director of the Police Administration, Lazar Šćepanović, said he hopes that Bosnia and Herzegovina will join the international project "Safe Tourist Destination".
He recalled that the Police Directorate is implementing this project with the aim of preserving a stable security environment during the summer tourist season, and that within it, based on bilateral protocols on cooperation, seven partner countries are sending their police officers - from the uniformed and criminal police - to the coastal municipalities of Montenegro.
At the invitation of the Director of the Directorate for Coordination of Police Bodies of BiH, Enes Karić, he participated in the First Conference "Safety of Historic Cities - Sarajevo as the Best Tourist Destination for 2025", which was held in Sarajevo from 6 to 8 May, where he spoke at the panel discussion "Cooperation between two countries with a focus on the tourist season".
The Police Directorate announced that the "Safe Tourist Destination" initiative, in addition to enabling the exchange of professional experiences, good practices and operational information, contributes to a greater sense of security for foreign tourists through the presence of officers from their home countries.
In this context, Šćepanović particularly emphasized the initiative and expressed hope that BiH, as the eighth partner, in addition to Croatia, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Italy and Romania, would join the project from 2026, thereby "further confirming its commitment to regional cooperation and European integration through strengthening inter-institutional security capacities."
He emphasized in his presentation that the Police Administration of Montenegro, as a "leader in the integration process in the Western Balkans region", is working dedicatedly to adopting European standards in terms of strengthening the efficiency of the police organization, and that by establishing strong cross-border cooperation "we can jointly implement quality activities and achieve measurable results". In this regard, he added that constructive regional cooperation is recognized as an indicator of the readiness of countries towards integration into the European community, "given the fact that in this process, in addition to the individual, progress achieved through this framework of functioning is also observed".
He said that he was particularly pleased by the fact that the European Commission had noticed and noted progress in the areas of the fight against organized crime and international police cooperation, as well as in "the comprehensive efforts that the Montenegrin police are making to make the security system more efficient and effective", and that progress in this area, which "we are implementing at all levels of operation as well as through regional police cooperation", places the Montenegrin Police Directorate among the professional and trusted partners in resolving security challenges.
He emphasized the importance of close professional cooperation that, on this path, the Police Directorate achieves with the security services and judicial authorities of BiH, which, as he said, represents confirmation of mutual readiness to further improve joint mechanisms of action in the fight against modern security challenges and threats.
As part of his official visit to Sarajevo, Šćepanović held an operational meeting with the Director of the Directorate for Coordination of Police Bodies of BiH, Enes Karić, and the Director of the Federal Police Administration, Vahidin Munjić.
The meeting was an opportunity to confirm the high-quality and substantive cooperation between the Police Administration of Montenegro and the law enforcement authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was focused on topics of importance for regional security, the police announced.
The meeting concretized the initiative to include BiH in the "Safe Tourist Destination" 2026 project, and also discussed aspects of operational cooperation in the field of modern security challenges, with an emphasis on cybersecurity and the role of special police units in the process of professional empowerment and harmonization with modern standards of action in the fight against organized crime, terrorism and other forms of complex security challenges and threats.
At the meeting, at the initiative of the Director of the Federal Police Administration, the possibility of professional training of polygraph examiners from BiH in Montenegro was also discussed, as an important step towards strengthening professional and technical capacities in the context of developing specialized forensic skills, bearing in mind that the Police Administration of Montenegro, as they said, has an accredited program, license and professional staff for the education of polygraph examiners, in accordance with modern standards in that field.
"The Police Directorate of Montenegro remains a stable, reliable and open partner in strengthening regional security, consistently affirming the principles of inter-institutional cooperation and joint response to modern security challenges, thereby confirming its strategic commitment to building a resilient, interoperable and professional security system," the institution announced.
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