Nordic-European police cooperation already marks 50 years of existence

The first of October, 2009 marks 50 years of Nordiska being a member of EuroCOP.
Nordiska is the umbrella organisation for the Nordic countries and its members are Politiets Fellesförbund, Norway; Politiforbundet, Denmark; SPJL, Finland; Landssamband Lögreglumanna, Iceland and Polisförbundet, Sweden.

Snorri Magnússon, President of the Nordiska Police Union says that the membership in EuroCOP has broadened the view of police officers both within the national organisations and towards the outside world.
"This fact has enabled Scandinavian police officers to realize that our conditions within our individual police unions are, in most cases, much better than that of many other officers. We hope that our cooperation within EuroCOP will further pull together police officers throughout Europe and that we will be able to assist colleagues in other countries to achieve the same results we have obtained."

Nordiska, formed in 1921, became a member of EuroCOP, then called UISP, as early as 1959.

EuroCOP/UISP started its work in 1953, through a joint effort of police unions from Belgium, France and Switzerland. Back then the main focus was promoting "peace and understanding", in the aftermaths of the Second World War. Today's main focus has shifted to represent the members on a European level, safeguarding basic police rights such as the right to organize, no privatization of the police and to ensure that police cooperation in the EU works on a practical level. Snorri Magnússon says there is still much work to be done in Europe for the police. "There is much work still pending on the issue of workers rights within many European police forces, as we have seen in the EuroCOP conferences till date."  "One would hope that, within the EU, working conditions of police officers throughout Europe would be on par with each other and also that the different police organisations reach the same working level as well as the workers rights levels, " he concludes.

Snorri Magnússon, President of the Nordiska Police Union