During the meeting, the Council of Europe presented recent developments on the tribunal. The founding of the international tribunal was welcomed by all the prosecutors present. In June 2025, Ukraine and the Council of Europe signed an agreement to establish the Special Tribunal, paving the way for the creation of an international and independent tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression. As the national authorities participating in the ICPA are already conducting investigations into the crime of aggression, the meeting emphasised the importance of ensuring that these investigations can be transferred to the future tribunal.

During the meeting, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Ruslan Kravchenko, said: First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone. Together, we are doing extremely important work for the future of justice. Our main goal is to ensure accountability for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. The evidence collected and the materials prepared could serve the work and future decisions of the Office of the Prosecutor of the Special Tribunal. We have already achieved a great deal, but there is still much more work ahead to be done.

Since the outbreak of the war, Eurojust has been at the forefront of supporting judicial accountability efforts against Russian crimes. Just three weeks following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Eurojust supported the setting up of a joint investigation team (JIT) that now consists of Ukraine, six EU Member States, and the participation of the ICC-OTP and Europol. The JIT’s work is supported by the ICPA, a unique judicial hub where prosecutors from different countries work together to support investigations into the crime of aggression. The ICPA is funded by the European Commission and will continue to receive funding until December 2026.

Eurojust President Mr Michael Schmid highlighted that work on the EU’s judicial response to the war in Ukraine continues as before, with Eurojust proud to host the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. The crime of aggression is a crime committed by the highest political and military leadership, and this is where our pursuit for accountability is and remains directed.

With the full-scale invasion ongoing for over three years, evidence of core international crimes is growing and is spread across countries with different legal systems. The prosecutors have valued the collaboration between them. Without the ongoing partnership within the ICPA and the JIT, it would have been more complicated for them to work together swiftly and exchange evidence from their respective countries, and they would not have been able to build strong cases for future prosecutions. Key to the successful cooperation is the Core International Crimes Evidence Database, a tailor-made judicial database set up by Eurojust to preserve, analyse and store evidence of core international crimes.