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On 8th December 2020, the European Court of Justice ruled that public prosecutors' offices can still be judicial or issuing authorities within the meaning of Articles 1(1) and 2(c) of the Directive regarding the European Investigation Order in criminal matters (EIO), ‘regardless of any relationship of legal subordination that might exist between the public prosecutor or public prosecutor’s office and the executive of that Member State and of the exposure of that public prosecutor or public prosecutor’s office to the risk of being directly or indirectly subject to orders or individual instructions from the executive when adopting a European investigation order’ [...]

We would like to invite all interested parties to attend the FREE online conference “European Investigation Order – Practical Dilemmas and Theoretical Considerations”. Prosecutors, judges, attorneys and academics from multiple EU Member States will share best practices and identify key shortcomings of the European Investigation Order. Presentations will be held by invited speakers from Germany, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Portugal and Macedonia. Facebook event is available HERE.  Online registration and finalized schedule of the conference and will be available soon! We can however already provide a sneak peek into the preliminary conference schedule (may be subject to some minor [...]

Earlier this week, an article regarding the cross-border gathering of electronic evidence under the EIO-Directive was published in the University of Graz Law School’s Paper – Law@Graz. The idea behind publishing an article written by a student in a paper for students was to present the EIO-LAPD project to them, as well as interest them in this rather complex topic by writing about something that appeals to younger generations, namely the electronic evidence. The article tried to shed some light on the relevance of the EIO-Directive mirrored in substantive changes in the horizontal model of judicial cooperation it established, especially when [...]

In its judgement in joined cases C-508/18 (Parquet de Lübeck) and C‑82/19 PPU (Parquet de Zwickau) which was delivered on 27 May 2019, the European Court of Justice found that the German Public Prosecutor does not qualify as an “issuing judicial authority” within the meaning of Art. 6(1) of the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant. Art. 6(1) of the Framework Decision defines the meaning of the term “issuing judicial authority” thereby determining which national authority may be considered competent to issue a EAW. Therefore, the Court concluded that the German Public Prosecutor may not be considered such an authority [...]

In Case C‑584/19, the Advocate General delivered his opinion (Opinion of Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona, 16 July 2020, C-584/19, Celex-No. 62019CC0584). At the heart of the case lies an EIO issued by the Public Prosecutor's Office in Hamburg, which requested the transfer of certain data from an account held in Austria. As the obtaining of such information under Austrian law requires a court authorization, the Vienna Public Prosecutor's Office filed an application with the Landesgericht für Strafsachen Vienna (Austria). In view of the ECJ decision on the status of the German Public Prosecutor's Offices in the context of the European Arrest [...]

EIO-LAPD partners from University of Maribor and Jožef Stefan Institute have published an article in the 5th number of the Journal for Commercial Labour and Social Law, Volume 289, indexed by Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (WPSA). The article is dealing with the EIO Directive and the problems appearing in collecting cross border electronic evidence. It is a contribution from the work carried within the dissemination part of the EIO LAPD project. The article provides an exhaustive discussion and comments about important problems in the today’s interconnected society and crime investigation implemented with use of the EIO instruments. Based on a survey [...]

Recently, the CJEU got its first chance to interpret some provision of the Directive 2014/41/EU regarding the European Investigation Order in criminal matters. The ruling (C-324/17, Gavanozov, 24 October 2019) concerns difficulties which the Specialised Criminal Court of Bulgaria encountered difficulties in completing Section J of the EIO form set out in Annex A to Directive 2014/41, which deals with legal remedies. The referring court noticed that Bulgarian law does not provide for any legal remedy against decisions ordering a search, a seizure or the hearing of witnesses. The referring court in Bulgaria therefore asked, »in essence, whether Article 5(1) of [...]