The year 2023 marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the European Judicial Network (EJN) in criminal matters. The EJN was set up in 1998 by the Council of the EU with the aim of assisting judicial practitioners in combating cross-border crime. Since then, a network of approximately 450 contact points in EU Member States and beyond has been established to facilitate direct one-to-one contact in order to resolve legal issues and carry out preparatory work for judicial cooperation in criminal matters.

Additional support is available through the EJN website, which offers practical guidance via its tools like Judicial Atlas, Compendium, and Fiche Belges. In addition, the website includes information about national judicial systems. By means of the Judicial Atlas, the authorities competent to receive requests for judicial cooperation can be identified. The Compendium offers access to forms for EAWs and MLAs in all 24 official languages of the EU, together with e-tools to assist authorities in filling out, drafting, and sending the requests. Lastly, the Fiche Belges portal provides legal and practical information on the applicability of judicial cooperation measures.

The EJN is supported by a Secretariat and a rotating Presidency Board, which follows the rotation scheme of the Council of the EU. The Secretariat is hosted by Eurojust. In January 2023, Hugh Dockry from Ireland became Secretary to the EJN, succeeding Swedish Ola Löfgren. In numbers, the EJN registers ca. 8000 new reported cases and approximately 4 million website page views per year.