The Erasmus University Rotterdam (the Netherlands), the Amsterdam Public prosecution office (the Netherlands), together with Bielefeld University (Germany) and the Federal prosecution office (Belgium) have taken the initiative for a research project into the current practice of the transfer of criminal proceedings between member states of the European Union. The project is funded by the European Commission as a part of the Justice programme (JUST-AG-2019).
Status of the project
By the end of 2021, the second phase (WP2) of the project was closed. The project entered its third phase with the preparation of a Working Conference on the transfer of criminal proceedings, open to experts from all Member States (and announced via the COPEN-channel). Due to the COVID-restrictions, the Working Conference had to be an online event. Aim of this Working Conference was identifying the main challenges in the field of the transfer of criminal proceedings, elaborating on the results of the on-site visits and interviews in WP2. On 20 January 2022, Experts from 22 Member States, alongside Eurojust and representatives of the European Commission took part in this online Working Conference. The event was a success and allowed the research team to elaborate further on the identified challenges.
The research team subsequently decided to organize an extra second Working Conference, to be held on 7 April 2022 in Rotterdam. This Conference is again open for all Member States. The second Working Conference will in a sense mirror the first Working Conference: the project team will present proposals for solutions for the identified challenges during the first Working Conference. In Workshop sessions these proposals will be discussed in detail with experts, as well as policy makers, legislative lawyers and scholars. This allows to cross check the proposals from different relevant angles.
Next steps
After the second Working Conference, the research team will be working on the final report of the research project, due for the end of May 2022. The report will be published as a book and will be made digitally available for all interested.
