EuroMed Justice brings together the most relevant stakeholders in the field of criminal justice, including representatives from the South Partner Countries (SPCs), Eurojust, European Judicial Network, the EU Member States, as well as other relevant EU and international organisations active in the judicial and law enforcement sector.

Protecting the EU neighbouring countries’ citizens against criminal activities, respecting the rule of law and fundamental human rights.

EuroMed Justice (EMJ) is a capacity-building program designed to develop a sustainable cross-regional mechanism of judicial cooperation in criminal matters between EU Member States (EU MS), the South Partner Countries (SPCs) – Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine¹ and Tunisia – and EU JHA Agencies. The 5.000.000 EUR program is funded by the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) and implemented by Eurojust throughout a dedicated Program Management team (hosted at Eurojust), in close cooperation with the Commission’s Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (DG JUST).

The overall objective is to contribute to protecting the EU neighbouring countries’ citizens against criminal activities, respecting the rule of law and fundamental human rights. More specifically, the Program aims to strengthen the cooperation in criminal matters in three axes: (1) amongst national judicial authorities in SPCs; (2) between SPCs and EU MS and (3) with EU judicial cooperation instances.

Main stakeholders include Ministries of Justice, Public Prosecution Offices, High courts and central authorities from SPCs, EU JHA Agencies, UNODC, UN-CTED, Council of Europe, IAP and relevant networks for judicial cooperation and training in criminal matters. A close involvement of DG NEAR and DG JUST as well as a strong reliance on EU Delegations to SPCs is sought throughout the program.

Eurojust and EJN plays a pivotal role by providing a unique forum for criminal justice practitioners to build sustainable coordination and cooperation mechanisms. The particular experience of Eurojust, EJN and JITs Secretariats will be very useful when exploring possibilities and avenues for operational cooperation with SPCs prosecutors and judges.

 

¹ This designation shall not be construed as recognition of a State of Palestine and is without prejudice to the individual positions of the Member States on this issue.

CrimEx, the Forum of Prosecutors General, Technical Assistance facility and the future JNet: main tools and actions of EuroMed Justice Program

CrimEx – EuroMed Justice Expert Group in Criminal Matters – is placed at the core of EuroMed judicial and law enforcement mechanism of cooperation and coordination. The network – composed of active criminal justice professionals – judges, prosecutors and legal advisors from the Justice Ministries – is connected with and supported by the Eurojust and European Judicial Network (EJN). CrimEx members exercise the region’s ownership in the implementation of the judicial cooperation and the monitoring of the results. It functions as a real think-tank benefiting of the support from Eurojust, EJN, UN-CTED, UNODC and the coordination with other projects EuroMed Police, Cyber South, CT MENA.

CrimEx creates the cross-regional forum to build the trust and mutual confidence, to exchange good practices and lessons learned, to carry out thorough analyses of the situation in each SPC and in the whole region, to set up specific recommendations, guidelines, manuals, studies and researches.

Furthermore, the CrimEx Docs, unique, pioneer and relevant documents and tools (manuals, technical guides and legal analysis on judicial cooperation) drafted and validated by CrimEx, made available in English, French and Arabic are at the disposal of criminal justice authorities from SPCs and EU MSs improving their skills and knowledge on how to effectively cooperate in international criminal matters cases.

The Forum of Prosecutors General, organised each year since 2018, gathering prosecutors general from both sides of the Mediterranean, is playing an important role in endorsing CrimEx recommendations and deciding on strategies and policies to be developed in the region for the enhancing of cross-border cooperation in criminal matters.

The establishment of a EuroMed Judicial Network of contact points (JNet) composed of practitioners who can assist with international judicial cooperation in criminal matters requests will strengthen the contacts and the operational cooperation between criminal justice authorities from SPCs and EU MSs.

EuroMed Justice’s objectives and activities are carried out following new, bottom-up and flexible approaches, which will be supported by the Technical Assistance Facility (TAF). Future requests from South Partner Countries and the identification of common needs will activate the TAF, providing the SPCs with tailor-made and ad hoc activities not foreseen in the original plans.