On 8 and 9 November, Eurojust hosted its seventh Annual Meeting on Migrant Smuggling. This event, organised by the Eurojust Anti-Trafficking Team, is a forum dedicated to judicial practitioners active in the fight against migrant smuggling. It also serves as the annual meeting of the Focus Group of prosecutors and investigative judges on migrant smuggling.
This year, the participants discussed
- current legislative initiatives combatting migrant smuggling to be proposed by the European Commission;
- how to enforce UN sanctions in migrant smuggling investigations;
- challenges and best practices in cooperation with third countries (with the participation of judicial practitioners invited through the Western Balkans Criminal Justice Project (WBCJ), the EuroMed Justice programme and by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) / West African Network of Central Authorities and Prosecutors (WACAP);
- migrant smuggling casework, with special focus on the protection of victims’ rights in migrant smuggling cases and contributions from Europol’s European Migrant Smuggling Centre (EMSC) and Frontex;
- the work of the Focus Group.
The successful meeting brought together more than 70 participants from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and served as a further event to build and promote mutual trust in judicial cooperation.
Eurojust is an agency of the European Union