Following the preparatory meeting, the second stage, an exercise named “Balkan Summer” designed to simulate a real-life operation, was organized by the Mission from 23-26 September. In this exercise, a group of migrants facilitated by members of a regional criminal organization commenced their journey from Turkey, passing through Bulgaria, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to Kosovo, from where they were moved further by the smugglers to Montenegro and Albania. During the exercise all aspects of a ‘live’ international investigation were undertaken, including the judicial procedures enabling the use of all necessary investigation techniques such as interception of communication and GPS surveillance. The exercise was successfully concluded on the night of 26 September, where a simultaneous arrest operation was carried out in all the named locations and 16 suspects were arrested and four victims identified. Also, an operation control room was established at the police premises in order to co-ordinate the actions of the participating law enforcement agencies during the operation. After the successful operation, the Mission successfully completed the event on 20 November with the debriefing meeting it organized with all participating representatives of the regional law enforcement agencies. During this event, the representatives of all police services and public prosecutors involved presented the activities and measures undertaken in their respective areas, and, based on the experience gained during the exercise, they shared their views on successes and shortcomings in combating migrant smuggling in the region. In addition, due to the valuable networking opportunities that all three stages of the event provided, they all appraised it as very beneficial in enhancing joint investigations of real cases in the future. Based on the participants’ conclusions, the meeting ended with several recommendations, which are expected to be implemented in order to improve the co-operation among participating agencies and to ensure better delivery of results in the future. Criminal Investigations/Criminal Intelligence In its criminal investigations on specific serious crimes, the Kosovo Police has demonstrated an increase in tackling human trafficking and the smuggling of narcotics, weapons and goods, which has resulted in an 18 per cent arrest increase for these types of offences. This success is due to increased internal supervision and highlighting the dangers of corruption and individual bad behaviours. An additional factor is the superior knowledge of the 2013 Criminal Procedure Code by the officers themselves. Criminal intelligence of the Kosovo Police continues to develop with both internal and international partners International information exchange has increased by 160 per cent in 2014 and inter-institutional material by 45 per cent compared to the year before. From 20-24 October, the Mission provided operational crime intelligence training to 19 Kosovo Police officers from the regions, whose responsibilities included intelligence gathering and risk assessment. The training aimed to provide officers in the field with the skills and knowledge needed to ensure an identical approach on criminal intelligence to that used by their colleagues in the centre. The course covered topics such as intelligence sources and intelligence gathering, analysing and dissemination, and a final exercise on operational intelligence. The course also introduced the participants to the most common pitfalls in the work of intelligence, biases to avoid and employment of intelligence in finding, reducing or preventing crime trends. Cybercrime Despite the fact that cybercrimes are an increasing threat worldwide due to the increased number of online financial transactions, output of the Kosovo Police Cybercrime Unit is still low. In 2013, this unit dealt with 19 cases compared to 428 cases dealt with by the Narcotics Unit; whereas in 2012 they only had 11 cases compared to 348 of narcotics in the same 64