Judicial training to prepare criminal justice professionals for #digitalisation and #artificialintelligence

Digitalisation for EU criminal justice professionalsDigitalisation has the potential to improve access to justice and the efficiency and resilience of the communication flows inherent to the cooperation between judicial and other competent authorities in EU cross-border cases.New technologies render the process of cross-border gathering of data swifter, more transparent and reliable.Digitalised platforms have the capacity to foster communications and dialogue between Member States' judicial authorities allowing them to exchange criminal justice decisions -most notably EIOs and MLA requests -in a secure, fast, streamlined and trusted way.To this extent, the roll out of the e-Evidence Digital Exchange System (eEDES) precisely aims to implement an EU-wide platform for electronically exchanging data collected through the EIO and MLA instruments in a secure and admissible way, and through clear and standardised electronic forms (instead of personal email or the postal service).This new platform could significantly improve the work of investigating and prosecuting authorities, because it would allow the issuing and execution of a wide range of investigative actions (including orders mandating the cross-border production and preservation of data).Moreover, especially after the covid pandemic, videoconferencing has already been widely proven to be an efficient tool in several Member States of the EU in terms of both facilitating cross-border criminal proceedings and also reducing the costs involved.If the benefits of increased videoconferencing are clear (saving time and money spent on travel, reducing carbon footprint, increasing flexibility, etc.), there are undeniable risks and potential drawbacks that must also be considered.