UIC represented by Mr José Pires (Senior Advisor of the UIC Security Division), attended the Pol-Primett II 7th Expert User Group meeting and final conference on 15 and 16 September in London.
Pol-Primett II aimed to further develop a police-private sector partnership to reduce metal theft across Europe to improve collaboration between law enforcement agencies and the private sector and provide a better understanding of metal theft.
Within the running of the project, it endeavoured to create an Expert User Group from law enforcement agencies and the private sector improving the communication and the sharing of good practices providing a legacy of collaboration and a reduction in metal theft.
The European PRIMETT Pol-II project had the financial support of the European Commission DG Home Affairs, promoting public-private collaboration that is not uniform amongst Member States; Pol-PRIMETT II provides a platform for a variety of joint practices to be shared and adapted to suit each country.
By bringing together law enforcement and eight member states institutions, this was another opportunity to meet in an international event, with experts from:
- Law enforcement
- Prosecutors
- European companies in the areas of telecommunications
- Power distribution
- Railways
- Metal recycling industries
- Farmers and other economic agents and sectors of administration
With an interest in combating theft of non-precious metals and smoothing their effects on the economy could exchange views and experiences.
UIC as official partner of Pol-Primett II presented the view on “Cross border mapping and analysis of metal theft within the EU”. That view is part of the UIC Metal Theft WG work that collects and shares the railway views and experiences. UIC has the rail technical support of the EU lobbying bodies (CER/EIM) activities into European Commission, in particular the DG MOVE LANDSEC advisory group activities.
UIC Metal Theft WG also acts as an information hub for railways/authorities on metal theft issues for good practices exchange between the different sectors including those participating in Pol-Primett forums.
Supporting the authorities and the legal institutions to introduce and take into account all the metal theft impacts such as repairs and replacement of stolen materials, costs of operational delays, damage the image of railways, technical consequences, etc. This partnership falls in the common understanding that only a collaborative mitigation effort can produce a tangible effect against this phenomenon.
Currently the development of an “EU metal theft mapping” will provide information not only on the “metal theft status quo”, but also on metal rail theft incidents data providing for law enforcement and judiciary forces. This work will be reported shortly.
The European PRIMETT Pol-II project is now coming to an end; nevertheless it was clear that all organisations and experts will take care to keep the information and contact networks running. Near future actions are expected and UIC will certainly be ready to act on the support to reduce the impact of metal theft on railways.
Metal theft is far from being mitigated and it is in fact affecting multiple industries and by consequence society. Rail’s response to this problem can and must be globally consistent across, having as a common and single objective “To mitigate metal theft and its impacts on railway users.”
