On 15th April 2021, the 20th Tool Correspondents meeting of the European Judicial Network (EJN), took place online, under the Portuguese Presidency of the EJN.
During this meeting, the new organisational support for the EJN website - through the recently established Eurojust web-team – was presented to the EJN tool correspondents. The newly appointed staff to the Eurojust web-team was introduced along with the new working methods in liaison with the EJN Secretariat.
The ‘EJN website redesign’ and its new look and feel was showed to the audience for the first time in ‘live’. With the new redesign, the modernised EJN Website will be visible in all supports (website, mobile phone, tablets). The EJN Secretariat showed and explained some of the Website sections visible in the new look and feel, as well as the improvements made in the back office of the EJN website.
Moreover, the Secretariat presented the ‘Revision of lists of measures for the EJN Judicial Atlas and Fiches Belges’ showing to the participants screenshots of the new platform for the Fiches Belges. Also, provided an overview on the next steps requiring the involvement of the tool correspondents for the population of the Fiches Belges and the Judicial Atlas in the new platform. Moving further on improvements to facilitate the work of the tool correspondents and of the EJN contact points in general, the EJN Secretariat informed on the state of play of the Reporting tool – where a working group would be set up to further improve the tool. On the launch of the revitalised EJN Secure connection (EJNSC) the Secretariat was delighted to launch the opening of subscription to the system for all EJN CPs.
A Tour de table of all Tool correspondents concluded the meeting. Each Tool correspondent reported, for their respective Countries, on the state of play of the required updates to the EJN Websites, e.g. on information in the EJN Contact Points list; on the status of Implementation tables and related updates on specific judicial cooperation instruments, on the Judicial Atlas in relation to the Regulation 2018/1805 on Freezing and Confiscation.
Background
The European Judicial Network is a network of national contact points. The role of the network is to improve, facilitate and speed up international judicial cooperation in criminal matters and ensure the proper execution of mutual legal assistance and mutual recognition requests, as well as to assist in establishing direct contacts between competent judicial authorities.
The role of the EJN Tool Correspondents is to ensure that all information o the EJN website related to his or her Member State is provided and updated in accordance with the EJN Decision (Council Decision 2008/976/JHA, Article 4.5). Moreover, Article 6.2 of the EJN Decision stipulates that the Tool Correspondents shall meet on an ad hoc basis, at least once a year.