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On 15 May 2024, eight EU institutions signed an agreement that sets up an EU ethics body. The agreement is designed to foster cooperation on ethical standards for the members of the parties to the agreement and to develop a common culture of integrity and ethics for the European Union’s institutions. It is also seen as a step to avoid corruption scandals, such as Qatargate.

On 25 July 2024, the European Commission adopted the 35th Annual Report on the protection of the European Union’s financial interests and the fight against fraud in 2023 (PIF Report). The irregular amounts related to fraud cases increased to €585.8 million (+103% compared to 2022).

On 11 September 2024, the General Court (GC) ruled for the first time on the legality of procedures of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) and OLAF vis-à-vis alleged irregularities committed by a former ECA member.The GC largely upheld the ECA’s decision on the …

In a report, published on 8 July 2024, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) found that the EU’s control system on cohesion spending is not working. Based on audits carried out during the 2014-2022 programming period and on information made available by the Commission, …

In its Special Report 07/2024, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) blamed that recovery of misspent EU money takes too long and deficiencies exist in some areas, such as expenditure for external action.The ECA examined how the recovery process of misspent EU funding …

On 11 September 2024, the German Federal Ministry of Justice presented a draft for a recast of the German Act on International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters (Gesetz über die Internationale Rechtshilfe in Strafsachen - IRG). The draft revises, restructures and modernises the …

On 9 April 2024, the European Data Protection Supervisor presented its Annual Report 2023. The Report looks back to the EDPS' activities in 2023 with regard to "supervision and enforcement", "policy and consultation", and "technology and privacy".When presenting the report on 9 April …

This news item features a summary and comment on the impact of the ECJ’s ruling in the EncroChat case. It is contended that the judgment leaves room for manoeuvre in that evidence obtained by a live French police hack of encrypted devices may be banned in German criminal proceedings.

The Regional Court of Berlin lodged a second reference for preliminary ruling to the ECJ, seeking clarifications on the legitimacy of an operation against the encrypted network EncroChat, notably as regards possible breaches of the rules of the European Investigation Order Directive.

On 29 April 2024, Eurostat published statistics on prisoners and prison occupancy in 2022. According to the publication, there were 483,593 prisoners in the EU in 2022. This is equivalent to 108 prisoners per 100,000 people. In 2021, the prisoner rate was 106 prisoners …