Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union

The European Judicial Network meets twice a year in order to discuss the general functioning of the EJN as well as to focus on a specific topic. The seminar to be held during the Belgian Presidency will be on the topic of ‘International collaboration in the border regions of Europe’. The various forms of cross-border legal collaboration in the member states will be examined and ‘best practices’ will be exchanged.

The European Judicial network (EJN) is a network of national contact points designed to facilitate judicial collaboration between member states regarding criminal matters. It was founded in 1998.

In Belgium, there is a wide range of cross-border regional collaboration, at the level of the police, as well as the judiciary and administrative authorities, and in certain cases with the customs authorities. A few examples include: Eurometropool, the Bureau for Euregional Collaboration (BEC), CCPD Luxemburg, Euregio Meuse Moselle…

At the European level, to date, there has been no investigation of the degree to which cross-border legal collaboration exists. The aim of this seminar is to chart the existing forms of judicial and police collaboration with legal finality and to examine their functioning. To this end, a survey was sent to the member states, which will subsequently be discussed at the seminar. The goal is to arrive at ‘best practices’ that can help the member states in establishing or improving collaboration programmes of this type.