Europe strengthens coordinated judicial response to serious cross-border crimes

Judicial authorities across the EU increasingly turn to Eurojust, the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, to work together to tackle serious cross-border crime. Eurojust’s 2019 Annual Report, shows that prosecutors from across the European Union and beyond turned to Eurojust for tailor-made support in nearly 8 000 cases, an increase of 17% compared with 2018.

About half of these cases were opened during 2019, while half were ongoing from previous years, reflecting a growing level of complexity in cross-border criminal investigations, which increasingly last more than one year. Eurojust facilitated coooperation on matters related to terrorism, cybercrime, human trafficking, migrant smuggling and drug trafficking among others.

Working together through Eurojust, national judicial authorities achieved sigificant n-the-ground results across a wide range of crime areas, including the freezing of approximately EUR 2 billion in criminal assets, bringing illicit drug trafficking worth over EUR 2.8 billion to a halt, and the arrests of nearly 2 700 suspects.

Ladislav Hamran, President of Eurojust, said: ‘This Annual Report is a vivid testimony to what prosecutors from across the EU and beyond can achieve when they join forces in the fight against organised crime and terrorism. I am incredibly proud of the impressive results that the Member States and Eurojust jointly accomplished in the past year. At the same time, I am aware that this report will reach you in extraordinary times. Since the coronavirus outbreak, we have adapted quickly to make sure criminals do not take advantage of this global health crisis by escaping justice.’

To assist major operations, the Agency supported the National Desks in the organisation of 430 coordination meetings and 27 action days from its coordination centre, allowing for real-time monitoring of action days, and provided operational and financial support to 270 joint investigation teams.

The largest amount of cases concerned a wide range of economic offences, including swindling, fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and corruption, as well as environmental crime and intellectual property crime. The number of new Eurojust cases concerning investigations of crimes prioritised in the European Agenda on Security nearly doubled in 2019.