This year, the Eurojust hosted the 18th annual Forum of the Prosecutors General of the EU Members States in The Hague on the 17-18th October. The annual Forum was jointly chaired by the Prosecutors General of Belgium and Hungary, the EU Member States holding the Presidency of the Council of the European Union during the year.
The key focus of the Forum were the fight against organized crime and the protection of intellectual property rights.
The new European Judicial Organised Crime Network (EJOCN), recently launched by the Eurojust, is aimed at fighting organized crime. The Prosecutors General, in this context, discussed possible ways of increasing the exchange of information, the use of encrypted communication tools and data protection issues.
Infringements of intellectual property crimes show a continuous increase regarding their number. The illegal use of brands and logos damages legally operating enterprises, and the illegal downloading and streaming platforms harm programme and filmmakers as well as broadcasters. Fake consumer goods often cause risks to public health, too.
Prosecutor General, Dr. Péter Polt highlighted that due to the rapid development of information technology country borders have lost their importance when it comes to intellectual property infringements. Therefore, provisions of civil law and criminal law need to form a coherent system in the international context as well, while simultaneously taking particularities of the national legal systems into account.
With this in mind, the Prosecutors General discussed that although criminal law standards differ in the Member States, establishing common criteria for the assessment of damages caused by infringements of intellectual property rights would facilitate the unified and effective fight.
The Prosecutor General of Hungary also paid a special visit to Eurojust President, Mr Ladislav Hamran, who is leaving his post after seven years, and during their friendly talks, he thanked Mr. Hamran for their well-functioning cooperation and joint work.
