Judicial authorities across the EU increasingly turn to Eurojust, the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, to work together to tackle serious cross-border crime. Eurojust’s 2019 Annual Report shows that prosecutors from across the European Union and beyond turned to Eurojust for tailor-made support in nearly 8 000 cases, an increase of 17% compared with 2018.

About half of these cases were opened during 2019, while half were ongoing from previous years, reflecting a growing level of complexity in cross-border criminal investigations, which increasingly last more than one year.

Working together through Eurojust, national judicial authorities achieved impressive on-the-ground results across a wide range of crime areas, including the freezing of approximately EUR 2 billion in criminal assets, bringing illicit drug trafficking worth over EUR 2.8 billion to a halt, and the arrests of nearly 2 700 suspects.