The EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, Eurojust, published its annual report for the year 2022 on Wednesday 24 May.
While the past year has been marked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this document reflects the work of the Eurojust Agency, which has focused heavily on supporting the judicial response of Member States and their partners to the war in Ukraine.
As the Annual Report notes, six days after the outbreak of the war, Eurojust organised a coordination meeting at the request of the Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian national authorities to discuss the prosecution of alleged serious international crimes committed in Ukraine.
This meeting was followed by the setting up of a joint investigation team involving the three national authorities, with the support of Eurojust and the JITs Network Secretariat (see EUROPE 12920/3). In addition, Eurojust’s mandate was rapidly extended to enable the Agency to create an innovative tool for collecting and analysing evidence of serious international crimes and will also host a new structure to support investigations into the crime of aggression (see EUROPE 12956/5).
At the end of the year, the European Commission asked Eurojust to host the International Centre for the Prosecution of Crimes of Aggression (ICPA), which was formalised last March (see EUROPE 13135/12).
Furthermore, Eurojust continued to fulfil its mandate to combat all forms of serious cross-border crime. The Agency’s work increased by 14% in 2022 compared to 2021. Eurojust handled 11,544 criminal investigations last year, including more than 2000 large-scale operations. Eurojust helped bring justice to more than 300,000 victims of crime, three times as many victims as the previous year, and contributed to the arrest of more than 4000 suspects, the seizure or freezing of criminal assets worth almost €3 billion and the seizure of firearms.
These operational results would not have been possible, according to the Agency, without transnational cooperation between judicial authorities, in close collaboration with all actors in the criminal justice chain.
Eurojust’s international cooperation continued to lead to an increase in the number of registered cases, with third countries opening 331 new cases in 2022 alone. The Agency’s contact points in non-EU countries also continued to grow, with Australia, Bahrain and Morocco joining Eurojust’s network of 65 countries in 2022. The Agency continued to serve the judicial authorities of the Member States by organising 528 international coordination meetings and 22 action days, as well as by providing operational support to 265 JITs (123 of which were funded by Eurojust).
To read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/71k (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)