On May 7th 2020, under the Croatian Presidency of the Council of the EU, the European Judicial Network (EJN) held the 1st EJN Videoconference meeting with discussions on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the procedures for international judicial cooperation.
The EJN National Correspondents/Contact Points from the following Member States participated: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, together with the EJN Secretariat and a representative from Eurojust. They exchanged information on the challenges that the practitioners in their EU Member State are facing with regard to the practical application of the different cooperation procedures. They also shared the provisional measures adopted in their countries in the times of the pandemic that have been adopted to advance with the investigations. The National Correspondents from Portugal and Luxembourg contributed to the meeting in written. The representative of Eurojust emphasised the great cooperation taking place with EJN which allowed the elaboration of the EJN-Eurojust compilation on the impact on COVID-19 on Judicial Cooperation in criminal matters.
The EJN participants identified difficulties, best practices and possible solutions to deal with cross-border cases during COVID-19 as well as how could the EJN support practitioners further in this difficult time.