Over the past decade, the challenge of corruption and organised crime drew increased attention of citizens and political leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Several legislative and institutional reforms have been set up, but the implementation of anti-corruption regulations and strategies remains difficult.
The fight against organised crime is fundamental to counter the criminal infiltration of the country's political, legal and economic system. Bosnia and Herzegovina still needs to comply with international standards in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing. This requires capacity building in financial investigation and asset seizure to fight against organised crime and corruption.
In this context, EU4Justice aims to enhance the effectiveness, integrity and professionalism of the institutions in the Rule of Law sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina. More specifically, the project improves cooperation between prosecution and law enforcement agencies to increase the efficiency of investigations in organised crime and corruption cases.
Scope of action
Since 1st February 2019, the project team based in Sarajevo, assisted by 28 EU Experts, have been building trust with the project’ beneficiaries in a challenging period for judiciary, so as to enhance the effectiveness, integrity, and professionalism of judges, prosecutors and police investigators in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The EU4Justice project team is fully committed to highlighting the important topics to judiciary in particular with the slant on ethics and integrity.
EU4Justice includes 5 areas of operation:
1) Strengthening supervision and control in prosecutors’ offices
2) Strengthening capacities, resources and the independence of the office of the disciplinary council (ODC)
3) Joint training in an interdisciplinary fashion to better respond to organised crime, corruption and the most common forms of commercial crimes (privatisation of companies, tax evasion, tax fraud)
4) Improve current practice and results in forfeiting criminal assets
5) Tracking mechanism improving mutual access to criminal case files by law enforcement agencies, prosecutors’ offices and courts
Implementing method
EU4Justice works with the entire justice chain in criminal matters in BiH with a focus on the exchange of experience with prosecutors and work in peer-to-peer between practitioners of BiH and the EU. This approach enables them to see their national systems through the magnifying glass of other experiences and thus what needs to be worked out become clearer in both legal systems.
Inter-agency cooperation is at the heart of the action as the fight against corruption and organised crime requires diverse and coordinated skills and talents. As it does not know borders, EU4Justice adjusted its actions to ensure that agencies are anchored at the international level. Opening up operational networks, developing mutual trust… so many assets in a long-term struggle against networks operating in several countries with the same attempts on the rule of law, human dignity or the legal economy. A long-term approach is an essential for an efficient and sustainable fight against corruption and organised crime.
Adaptation to the Covid-19 pandemic
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, EU4Justice organised nine round tables, which dealt with:
• case studies on high profile financial investigations,
• the methodology to investigate disciplinary matters involving judges and prosecutors,
• the good practices on the organisation and role of Court experts,
• the influence of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights of Strasbourg in Bosnian criminal courts.
The Covid-19 pandemic brought additional challenges for EU4Justice and its partners as organised crime is taking advantage of this crisis to innovate in its practices (counterfeiting of medical equipment, cyber-attacks, money laundering, human trafficking) and proliferate. The project has switched to online events to keep up its capacity building programme.
Since the beginning of the project, over 500 members of judiciary and law enforcement agencies went through various trainings, workshops and events (online and in person).
EU4Justice’s ultimate goal
The final conference of the EU4Justice Project took place on July 13, 2021. “The EU4Justice has few crucial contributions and they represent the legacy of the project. The Guides and Manuals produced through this project will enhance the capabilities of the prosecutors primarily to further improve the quality of their performance. In a world where everything is accelerating and where criminals are building increasingly trans and international networks, this kind of assistance is appreciated especially when the legal international cooperation has become more and more key to addressing these challenges,” stated Admir Suljagić, Director of HJPC Secretariat, who was the focal point for the EU4Justice project.
Read also: The EU4Justice Project provided capacity-building assistance to almost 800 members of the judiciary
At the end of the project, judiciary in BiH should score tangible results on corruption and high-profile financial investigations with judicial decisions on seizure and confiscation of criminal assets. The interdisciplinary approach between prosecutors and law enforcement agencies will enable the authorities to follow more efficiently the illicit gains and to enable the prosecutors to file indictments that will lead to verdicts.
EU experts and project’ beneficiaries acknowledged that both the lack of cross-disciplinary work and appropriate international cooperation in judicial matters benefit only criminals and seriously damage the Rule of Law.
Find out more about EU4Justice on the projet’s website : eu4justice.ba
