_________________________
Conference                          __

Countering Narcotics and Organized Crime in The Baltic Region

The Silk Road Studies Program is organizing a two-day open conference in Stockholm regarding narcotics and organized crime issues in the Baltic region during 1-2 June 2005. The conference will focus on understanding of drugs related problems and organized crime behavior in the Baltic.

In the context of rapid increase in the accessibility of narcotics and its consequences within the European Union the efforts to combat narcotics abuse and spreading of organized crime networks are in focus. Since the Baltic region is one of the European frontiers in combating and preventing the inflow of drugs to the EU, we have preferred to use the expertise and experience in the region in order to analyze the possibilities of improving the current situation. This concerns the immediate and wider Baltic region. The purpose of the conference is to converse the counter-narcotics efforts and even to examine the region’s capacity to tackle the problem.

The participants consist out of high level government officials from the Baltic region and Sweden, also wide range of renowned academics thus covering the wide range of competence regarding to the region and issues covered on the conference.