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European Judicial Network (EJN) – Connecting Justice
The EJN is a network of national contact points – prosecutors, judges, representatives of ministries of justice, and law enforcement authorities – whose main task is to facilitate international judicial cooperation in criminal matters. Operational since 1998, the EJN Contact Points are recognised as an essential hub to enable judicial cooperation in their respective countries, as the number of recorded cases during the period between 2010 and 2020 has exceeded 90,000.
The legal basis of the EJN is Council Decision 2008/976/JHA of 16 December 2008 on the European Judicial Network (the “EJN Decision”).
The EJN holds five EU-level meetings per year, allowing practitioners to get to know each other, establish professional relationships and deal with requests for judicial cooperation on the spot. The meetings also provide a forum for discussion of practical and legal problems encountered in the context of judicial cooperation.
In recent EJN meetings, it has been concluded by the EJN Contact Points that mutual recognition instruments are a topic to be raised in different fora for discussion. There is a continuous need for training at the national and at the EU level with the involvement of the EJN and EJTN on different instruments. National intranet pages, too, could be a useful source for sharing EU or national guidelines, best practices, and handbooks to facilitate the issuing and execution of the orders/certificates. Finally, involvement of the EJN (practitioners) during the EU legislative process has been considered highly beneficial in recent years in relation to creating and improvement of the EU legal instruments.
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