On 29 June 2021, the 56th Plenary meeting of the EJN took place under the Portuguese Presidency in the online environment. Almost 100 participants - EJN Contact Points from the EU Member States, EU candidate, potential candidate and EJN associated countries, as well as representatives from Eurojust, EJCN, Genocide network, the European Commission and the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU – gathered to discuss actual topics on judicial cooperation in criminal matters: EAW, e-evidence and freezing and confiscation.
The Plenary meeting was opened by Mr. Mário Belo Morgado, Deputy Minister of Justice, Portugal, who emphasized that the EJN has turned into strategic tool for fighting transnational crime by strengthening dialogue between authorities and effective judicial cooperation based on mutual trust. Furthermore, Mr. Didier Reynders, EU Commissioner for Justice, in his opening speech pointed out that the EJN is the voice of practitioners in the legislative process, and in this context he thanked the EJN Working Group on e-evidence for its active support. Additionally, the representatives from the Council Secretariat and the European Commission presented projects and legislative proposals relevant for the work of the EJN.
In the afternoon session, three parallel workshops took place where participants discussed the following topics:
• Impact of the CJEU case law on the EAW
The recent case-law of the CJEU has changed the already familiar practice on issuing and executing the EAW, setting out new prerequisites to be considered by the competent authorities across the EU. Acknowledging the broad range of these newly arisen issues, this workshop was focused on the case law on the concept of issuing Authority.
• Direct cross-border access to electronic evidence
Nowadays, obtaining electronic evidence is no longer a national issue. By its nature, electronic evidence may be stored not only locally, but also in other computer systems in different parts of the world. One of the main problems is that crime might be committed in seconds, however, obtaining the electronic evidence, especially from the non-EU countries, might take years. Due to this reason, there is a clear need for practitioners to have an effective modern instrument that would assist them in their investigations - and EJN is perfectly suitable to provide the forum to the practitioners to make their opinion heard by the legislator.
• New rules on Freezing and Confiscation: practical application
The new Regulation on Freezing and Confiscation that started to apply on 19 December 2020 has brought new challenges for practitioners; some of them had been chosen for the discussion – inter alia, direct applicability, scope and restitution to the victims. The aim of this workshop was to discuss these challenges and innovations and to analyse how the EJN had supported its application so far and what could be done in the future in this regard.
The conclusions of the workshops will be available in the EJN website in the nearest future!
