Our mission

Our mission is to strengthen cross-border cooperation between the Member States including Schengen associated countries by facilitating the exchange of knowledge, expertise and other non-operational information on investigating missing persons. Because together we search, investigate and identify; “Together we care”

Established

Under the Dutch EU presidency (2016), the Minister of Security and Justice proposed the establishment of a European police expert network for missing persons.

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Objectives

Under the Slovenian EU presidency, the Council conclusions were adopted in December 2021 in the context of cross-border police cooperation in the field of missing persons.

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Definition missing person

In January 2022, the PEN-MP Core Group adopted the definition of a missing person.

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Statute

The statute of the PEN-MP defines relations, rights and obligations between the members en observers of the expert network.

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PEN Members

The Core-group contains the following countries: Czech Republic, France, Germany, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands.

The other participating members are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia.

Besides the participating members the Pen-MP also includes observers from various law enforcement agencies like: National Crime agency (UK), National Police Chiefs Council (UK), New South Wales Police Force ( Australia), Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Canada), Kosovo Police, Europol, Interpol and Frontex.

Collaborations

An important aspect of PEN-MP’s mission is to promote cooperation and the sharing of information between different countries and agencies. The network aims to share best practices and promote a unified approach in investigating missing persons cases and actions in “live” international child abduction. This is achieved by organizing conferences, workshops and training sessions where key issues are discussed and experiences are shared. Read more about our projects

 

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