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After the end of its Presidencey of the Council of the EU, Sweden informed about its achievements. The Swedish Presidency maintained continuous dialogue on the consequences of the Russian war in Ukraine and finalise agreements on several legislative dossiers.

In a resolution adopted on 12 July 2023, the European Parliament (EP) reiterated its call on the Council to approve Romania’s and Bulgaria’s accession to the Schengen area. MEPs regret that the Council rejected the countries’ accession in a decision of 8 December 2022 …

Following the entry into force of Directive 2023/977 on the exchange of information between the law enforcement authorities of Member States (→ eucrim Spotlight of 12 July 2023), civil liberties organisation Statewatch voiced criticism over the new legislation. The NGO pointed out that “Europol's …

On 15 February 2023, the ECJ delivered a judgment on the individualisation of the obligation to state reasons for a judicial authorisation of telephone surveillance measures. It was issued in relation to the Bulgarian court practice of using a pre-drafted general text template to justify a decision on telephone interception. According to the ECJ, this practice is in line with the Directive on privacy and electronic communications under certain conditions.

On 4 April 2023, OLAF presented the results of its operations against tobacco smuggling in 2022. International operations involving OLAF during 2022 led to the seizure of 531 million contraband cigarettes. The majority had been illegally produced within the EU.

In a resolution adopted on 15 June 2023, MEPs discuss the lessons learned from the Pandora Papers and other data leaks on tax evasion schemes, and make a series of recommendations to combat tax abuse and money laundering.

On 4 April 2023, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) sent letters to the trilogue partners (the European Parliament, the Council, and the European Commission) concerning the envisaged rules on data sharing for anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) purposes. The …

Mandated by the Commission, a research group drafted a Handbook of good practices in the fight against corruption. Its aim is to map a variety of anti-corruption practices in EU Member States that have proved to be useful in solving problems related to corruption, and which can inspire similar initiatives elsewhere. It is clustered into eight types of anti-corruption approaches.

This news item continues the reporting on key EU reactions following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 in view of the impact on the EU's internal security policy, criminal law, and the protection of the EU’s financial interests. The overview covers the period from beginning of January 2023 to the end of June 2023. It connects to previous overviews, which were published in the eucrim issues of 2022.

Ten civil society organisations submitted their criticism of the new Commission initiative “Security-related information sharing − reciprocal access for frontline officers in the EU and key partner countries”. Among the dangers cited: aiding political repression and underpinning human rights violations.The objective of …