Abstract
The area of freedom, security and justice of the European Union (EU) is closely linked to the establishment of an internal market within the European Union, especially with the freedom of movement. In this respect, the creation of common rules against transnational criminality became an issue of the utmost importance in the wake of the creation of the Schengen zone. An anti-drugs unit was created in 1995, which later became Europol, an EU agency in charge of criminal cooperation. The need for a judicial cooperation among the Member States became also necessary: Eurojust was created as a means to fighting “effectively against the growing cross-border criminality resulting from globalization and increase of transborder crime”.
Before its formal creation in 2002 by a Council Decision , judicial cooperation within the EU was deemed insufficient as it was organised by “Council of Europe conventional instruments from the 1950s, which were hardly appropriate to the task”. The idea of effective means of achieving judicial cooperation was then put forward within the Union and the success of the cooperation in the Anti-Drugs Unit and then Europol was taken as an example. The idea of Eurojust was developed at the European Council of Tampere on 15th-16th October 1999, which recommended the creation of a body composed of “national prosecutors, magistrates, or police officers of equivalent competence (…) with the task of facilitating the proper coordination of national prosecuting authorities and of supporting criminal investigations in organized crime cases, notably based on Europol's analysis, as well as of coordinating closely with the European judicial network, in particular in order to simplify the execution of letters rogatory”.
