Justice – Photo © Yanchenko – Fotolia
(STRASBOURG) – New rules on the exchange of electronic evidence by law enforcement authorities, adopted Tuesday by the European Parliament, will make cross-border investigations more effective.
Electronic evidence is relevant to 85% of criminal investigations, the Commission estimates, and in 65% of these cases, the evidence needs to be obtained from another member state. Evidence can consist of content data (such as text, voice, images, video or sound), traffic data (for example timestamps, protocol and compression details, and information about recipients) or subscriber data (identifying information for a subscriber or customer). Currently, exchanging this kind of evidence depends on a variety of bilateral and international agreements on mutual legal assistance (MLA), resulting in a fragmented landscape and, often, lengthy procedures.
The legislative package will introduce a coherent EU framework for handling electronic evidence, speed up the process of evidence gathering, and maintain safeguards for fundamental rights.
“This is a huge step forward for the cooperation of law enforcement authorities in EU member states and service providers,” said Birgit Sippel MEP. She added that Parliament had ensured that fundamental rights remain protected, as the member state in which the service provider is located will be ‘notified’ of requests for particularly sensitive data, unless the suspect lives in the issuing state and the offence was committed there.”
The new rules will allow national authorities to request evidence directly from service providers in other member states (so-called “production orders”), or ask that data be preserved for up to 60 days, so that relevant data will not be destroyed or lost (“preservation orders”). The law also introduces a mandatory deadline of 10 days for responding to a production order (eight hours in emergency cases). As part of the same package, MEPs adopted a directive mandating service providers that offer services in the EU to name designated establishments or legal representatives where member state authorities can address electronic evidence requests.
MEPs introduced provisions ensuring authorities can refuse evidence requests when they have concerns about media freedom or fundamental rights violations in the requesting member state, and service providers will be able to flag concerns regarding media freedom. They also ensured ordering authorities requesting sensitive data (such as traffic data, except where it is used only for identification, and content data) will in most cases have to notify the authorities in the target country to ensure transparency.
Further information, European Parliament
The adopted texts will be added here (13.6.2023)
