The European Judicial Network, which celebrated its tenth anniversary since its beginning last year, is based on the cooperation of specialists from all the Member States in the area of judicial cooperation in criminal matters.
The conference focused on the often neglected but for practice very important area of cooperation which includes a cross-border surveillance of persons or subjects, a monitored consignment and a telecommunication tapping within the mutual cooperation among the EU Member States. State prosecutors, judges, and representatives of Ministries and Union institutions discussed the practical problems appearing within this type of cooperation. At five workshops they dealt particularly with practical model cases based on real situations.
As an illustrative example they discussed a finding of a drug consignment at the Prague Ruzyně Airport. The competent Czech authorities have to react on it as fast as possible and at the same time they mustn´t neglect the cross-border cooperation with their colleagues. Therefore they have to solve whether to secure it directly at the place of finding or whether to agree with their colleagues from the Member State where the drugs lead to upon monitoring the consignment. Meanwhile they have to consider whether it will be possible to monitor and tap the consignee afterwards. The experts also deliberated on how to simplify the execution of necessary formalities in similar cases in practice and also e.g. how to efficiently solve situations when a supranational group of human-being traffickers operates at the borders of several states.
The specialists agreed that problems and unclarities appear within specific applications of legislative and international instruments and often prevent a successful cooperation in practice. "However, from the conclusions of the discussion two specific achievements of the Czech Presidency emerged. Firstly, we proposed specific recommendations which will be published on the website of the European Judicial Network (http://www.ejn-crimjust.europa.eu/). The website will also include the States´s answers to the questionnaire we prepared to this topic. Secondly, the Czech Presidency achieved a significant success in the form of adoption of rules on functioning of the European Judicial Network and rules on the organization of regional Network´s Meetings, the goal of which is to further strengthen and improve its functioning," the Minister Daniela Kovářová said.
Petra Střítecká, Spokesperson for the Czech EU Presidency.