The ‘Digital Cross-Border Cooperation in Criminal Justice’ Conference, which was held in Brussels on 21-22 of January 2020, brought together 118 professionals from 68 different organizations from EU and beyond. 24 Member States, the Council of the European Union, INTERPOL, EUROPOL, EUROJUST, EJN, EJTN, EDPS, and other EU bodies, alongside civil society, academia, training and professional organizations, etc. were represented in the conference meeting room.
The Conference was organized within the joint framework of EVIDENCE2e-CODEX, EXEC and e-Evidence Projects.
The e-Evidence Project led by the European Commission, DG Justice and Consumers, provides for the e-Evidence Digital Exchange System that manages the European Investigation Order/Mutual Legal Assistance procedures/instruments (e-Forms, business logic, statistics, log, etc.) on European level. The Reference Implementation Portal is the front-end portal of the e-Evidence Digital Exchange System and is also provided by the EC.
‘Electronic Xchange of e-Evidences with e-CODEX’ (EXEC) Project extends and strengthens key components of the e-CODEX infrastructure for the fully electronic exchange of European Investigation Orders and related electronic evidences between Member States. Each participating Member State uses e-CODEX to set up an access point to interconnect with other Member States for exchanging electronic evidences. While e-CODEX operates at international level, on national level the respective national systems are in play along with the e-Evidence Digital Exchange System.
‘Linking EVIDENCE into e-CODEX for EIO and MLA procedures in Europe’ (EVIDENCE2e-CODEX) Project provides for the Evidence Exchange Standard Package Application, a web application for creating and/or preparing the evidence packaging and facilitating its exchange through the Reference Implementation Portal and over the e-CODEX infrastructure using a language standard for the representation of the information of the evidence package (data and meta data related to an evidence).
The first day provided for expert presentations and discussions on the up-to-date legal and policy issues in the field of digital cross-border cooperation, the most recent IT and infrastructure developments facilitating the legal instruments, the involvement of law enforcement agencies in the judicial cooperation chain, the role of the private sector in the judicial cooperation data flow, as well as for detailed presentations of the three projects.
The second day continued the discussions in the field of digital cross-border judicial cooperation in criminal matters with the following sessions: evidence exchange and standards facilitating the cross-border investigations; the changes in the legal professions to reflect on the pressing legal and technology needs; EU best practices and lessons learnt on the adoption of the cross-border cooperation tools. The event closed with a series of short presentations on the action plans and steps forward undertaken by the project partners to rollout and continue their efforts in the field.
All presentations and other resources, as well as photos from the event are available here.
The conference was organized by LIBRe Foundation in cooperation with the three projects' coordinators.
