Judicial cooperation in criminal matters achievements during the legislative term 2014-2019: the role of the European Parliament

Briefing 13-05-2019

Judicial cooperation in criminal matters is based on the principle of mutual recognition of judgments and judicial decisions, and includes measures to approximate the laws of the Member States in several areas. It includes minimum rules concerning the definition of criminal offences and sanctions in the areas of particularly serious crime with a cross-border dimension: terrorism, trafficking in human beings and sexual exploitation of women and children, illicit drug trafficking, illicit arms trafficking, money laundering, corruption, counterfeiting of means of payment, computer crime and organised crime. Considerable progress was made in developing the judicial cooperation in criminal matters in all these areas during the legislative term 2014-2019. Most importantly, the new Eurojust Regulation will take effect in December 2019 and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office is expected to start operating from late 2020 or early 2021 onwards. In Parliament, the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE Committee) is responsible for measures relating to police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, including terrorism, and substantive and procedural measures relating to the development of a more coherent Union approach to criminal law, according to Parliament’s Rules of Procedure.