On 15-17 June 2022 the 59th Plenary Meeting of the European Judicial Network (EJN), held under the French Presidency of the Council of the EU, took place in Bordeaux, France.
After the opening remarks by the French Presidency, the consequences of the war in Ukraine were presented with regard to judicial aspects of international sanctions and to strengthening cooperation in the fight against war crimes. Mr Peter Csonka, Deputy Director for Criminal Justice Directorate General for Justice and Consumers, European Commission made an intervention on the actions of the Commission. The intervention was followed by Mr Lukáš Stary, National Member for the Czech Republic at Eurojust, who gave a presentation on the role of Eurojust in this.
The key topics of the meeting were freezing and confiscation of crypto-currency; access to digital evidence in the context of hate crime and cooperation in the fight against environmental crime. After the presentations were made on the topics by experts of France, the EJN Contact Points continued the discussions on relevant matters in dedicated workshops.
On the second day of the meeting the EJN Contact Points used the opportunity to share with the participants relevant updates in the field of judicial cooperation in their Member States. Several non-EU EJN Contact Points used to the opportunity to present themselves. Presentation of the METIS (Mutual recognition in Europe through InterVision Studies) project was made by the project team from France, the Netherlands and Belgium. Finally, the European Commission further explained the state of play of the digitalisation of criminal cooperation – the e-Edes project and initiative on the digitization of judicial cooperation as well as the collaboration platform to support the operation of joint investigation teams.
The conclusions of the workshops will be uploaded on the EJN website in due time.