This meeting practically brought to an end the Maltese Presidency of this forum.

Among other issues, delegates from the CIMO member countries – Algeria, France, Italy, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Portugal, Spain and Tunisia – finalised the text of the official Tunis Declaration, which will form the basis of the agenda of the 10th Ministerial Conference, being held in Tunisia on Thursday and Friday, following its selection to assume the CIMO’s Presidency.

During this meeting practically all delegations had words of praise for the successful coordination of the Maltese Presidency during which the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry managed to organise a number of senior officials’ and technical meetings – the first of which was a senior officials’ meeting on 15 and 16 October 2003 which, in the light of the Malta Declaration as well as the policy framework outlined by Tonio Borg, deputy prime minister and minister for justice and home affairs during the ninth ministerial conference held in Malta on 24 and 25 September 2003, proposed the agenda to be undertaken during the Maltese Presidency.

Subsequently, Malta hosted two topical technical meetings: Paedophilia on the Internet, on 24 and 25 February, during which technical experts and senior officials from the Home Affairs and Foreign Affairs Ministries and Agenzija Appogg cooperated on a bilateral project with technical experts from Italy and Cooperation in the Mediterranean for Combating Environmental Crime in relation to Operational Oil Pollution from Ships, held on 6 and 7 April, wherein Maltese as well as REMPEC technical experts made various highly interesting presentations on the subject that were very well-received by the other CIMO members.

Upon Malta’s initiative, two other seminars were organised during the Maltese Presidency: a Seminar on the Combating of Documents’ Forgery was held in Portugal on 18 and 19 May, while another meeting on the subject Illegal Migration: Challenges and Responses was held in Libya on 8 and 9 June in conjunction with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

The senior officials, while thanking the Maltese Presidency for its hard efforts to organise all these activities, emphasised that concrete cooperation among all CIMO member states needs to be continually enhanced. Only thus can the continued future success of the 4+5 CIMO forum be ensured.

As stated by Charles Deguara, permanent secretary at the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry, in this meeting’s opening address: “the most important lesson learnt during this Presidency is precisely that operational cooperation among CIMO partners is essential if any significant headway is to be achieved within this forum.”