EU-US Agreement on Combating Cybercrime

Combating and preventing the commission of particularly serious offences, especially those related to cybercrime, requires a tailored response, which means making prevention work more effective, through the work of bodies and institutions with specific powers in this area, but also of judicial bodies that must cooperate, so that the existence of international instruments has become an absolute necessity. These are intended to strengthen international judicial cooperation (in addition to other activities) by coordinating efforts and actions to dismantle organized crime groups. Given the importance of electronic evidence in the investigation and prosecution of offenders in this area, in June 2019, the Council authorized the European Commission to start the procedure to start negotiating an agreement on behalf of the EU with the US on access to and collection of electronic evidence, negotiations which are ongoing. Of course, the subject matter of the agreement and the negotiated clauses are not public at the moment, but the European Commission regularly informs the Council on the state of these negotiations, so we intend to highlight the advantages of concluding this agreement as soon as possible from the perspective of international judicial cooperation.