Ladislav Hamran, Eurojust President

The only constant in life is change, and 2023 has been a year for Eurojust which brought exactly that. Eurojust’s role in the European Union’s judicial response to the continuing war of aggression against Ukraine has been at the heart of much of our work in the past 12 months. The launch of the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression in Ukraine (ICPA) in July 2023 and the establishment of the Core International Crimes Evidence Data Base (CICED) have been crucial, and we are keen to further support the fight against impunity for atrocity crimes. We expect our work in this field to grow substantially in years to come and to help close the security chain across borders and jurisdictions.

In June 2023, we launched Eurojust’s Digital Criminal Justice Programme, which will lead to faster and closer collaboration between ourselves, EU Member States, partners and third countries. At the same time, 2023 was a year in which our casework rose to record levels. We are grateful for the confidence prosecutors and judges from across the continent and beyond continue to place in us. Eurojust last year supported 13 164 cases, representing a 14% year-on-year increase, and hosted 577 coordination meetings on ongoing investigations. In addition and possibly even more important, 5 710 files of our overall workload consisted of new cases, up from 5 227 in 2022. These figures bear witness to the ever-growing international dimension of organised crime and to the added value Eurojust and its work represent to judicial professionals not just in the European Union, but increasingly to those in partner countries too. In addition to the ten Liaison Prosecutors (LP) stationed at Eurojust from non-EU countries, the LP-network grew in 2023 with a prosecutor from the Republic of Moldova, and we look forward to its further expansion in 2024.

With all this in mind, let me thank all our partners for their continued support to Eurojust’s mission and I look forward to an opportunity of meeting you in The Hague.