Digital Criminal Justice is the name of the information exchange infrastructure that Eurojust, the European agency for judicial cooperation, aims to set up, according to a note from the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the EU dated 19 November.
Eurojust is based on the observation that there is currently no structured and integrated information system to support operational exchanges between judges and prosecutors at EU level.
National prosecutors continue to work with systems that were not designed to exchange information with their colleagues abroad or with Eurojust, she explains. Eurojust's information exchange system is still largely based on manual data entry and does not connect to other databases.
Thus, the Agency proposes to establish an easy-to-use, fast, reliable, automated, encrypted and interoperable IT infrastructure between national authorities, Eurojust and other EU agencies operating in the field of justice and internal affairs.
With such a system, prosecutors who are members of Eurojust's National Coordination System would be able to access the Eurojust database remotely and exchange case information in real time from their offices, she explains. All national authorities participating in a joint investigation team would also be able to plan their operations and exchange information and evidence in a secure online environment.
In an effort to convince, Eurojust recalls that, in its conclusions of 18 October (see EUROPE 12119), the European Council called for the Agency to be provided with sufficient resources to meet the new challenges posed by technological developments and the evolution of the security threat, in particular through interinstitutional cooperation and better access to data.
European ministers should be invited to mandate Eurojust to develop concrete proposals to move in this direction at the Justice Council in early December. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)