A Regional meeting of the EJN organised by Slovenia took place in Novi Sad, Serbia in October last year. This meeting was a follow up of the highly successful Regional meeting of EJN Contact Points in South East Europe in Ljubljana in October 2016. The meeting was organised in a close cooperation between Slovenian EJN contact points and IPA2014 project team. EJN Contact Points from all over the region attended the meeting from EU Member States, EU candidate countries and from potential candidates – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, FYROM, Kosovo*, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. The IPA 2014 project team and the EJN Secretariat were invited to make interventions.
The focus of the meeting was on the development of standardised forms for MLA requests in different areas of judicial cooperation. The work program emphasized mainly practical aspects of the international cooperation in criminal matters between third countries but also of the cooperation with EU Member States. The majority of the meeting was devoted to the workshops, led by different EJN Contact Points.
Workshops held covered the following topics:
MLA for hearing the defendant/witness, incl. videoconference
MLA for house search
MLA for obtaining bank accounts
MLA for transfer of proceedings
MLA for obtaining procedural documents and e-evidence
The outcome of the meeting was considered highly valuable for the EJN Contact Points in the region and conclusions made provide practical solutions to several problems in relation to requesting mutual legal assistance to another country.