National prosecutors seconded to Eurojust — the EU’s agency for judicial cooperation in criminal matters — can spend up to half their working time on administrative tasks rather than coordinating cross-border cases. That is one of the findings behind a new European Commission proposal that would replace Eurojust’s founding Regulation in its entirety and rework how the agency is run.
The proposal (COM(2026) 570, procedure 2026/0164/COD) would repeal and replace Regulation (EU) 2018/1727, the current Eurojust Regulation. It is still at an early stage of the EU’s ordinary legislative procedure: it has just been transmitted to national parliaments, and negotiations in the European Parliament and the Council have not yet begun. The Commission itself estimates political agreement towards the end of 2027.
Why the Commission is proposing this now
The immediate trigger is Eurojust’s own 2025 evaluation, published on 2 July 2025, which identified structural and operational constraints limiting the agency’s ability to deliver on its mandate under Article 85 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. Among the findings: National Members — the prosecutors and judges each Member State seconds to Eurojust’s seat in The Hague — spend between 40% and 50% of their time on administrative work, leaving less capacity for casework. The evaluation also pointed to inconsistent powers among National Members across Member States, and to a cumbersome, largely manual system for cross-checking information with partners such as Europol and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO).
What the proposal changes
Separating governance from casework. The proposal introduces a new management structure — a Management Board (with one representative per Member State plus the Commission) and an Executive Board — to take on strategic, administrative and budgetary decisions. This is intended to free up the College, made up of all National Members, to focus exclusively on operational casework, in line with the Common Approach the EU applies to its decentralised agencies generally.
Expanding Eurojust’s competence. The list of serious crimes falling within Eurojust’s mandate would be updated to explicitly cover cybercrime, gender-based violence, and violations of EU restrictive measures — reflecting, in the Commission’s words, the «evolving criminal landscape» the agency is meant to address.
Strengthening the ability to act proactively. The proposal reinforces National Members’ capacity to open cases on Eurojust’s own initiative, rather than only in response to a request from a Member State, and to ask national authorities to open or extend investigations where Eurojust’s own analysis identifies a need for coordination.
Creating judicial coordination platforms. A new instrument — semi-permanent platforms bringing together national authorities for particularly complex, multi-jurisdictional investigations — is explicitly modelled on the operational experience of the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA), hosted by Eurojust.
Modernising information exchange with partners. The proposal seeks to optimise the automated «hit/no-hit» system that lets Eurojust cross-check information with Europol, the EPPO, OLAF, the new Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) and the EU Customs Authority, replacing what the 2025 evaluation described as a cumbersome, largely manual process.
Who is affected
The most directly affected are the National Members and their desks — the prosecutors and judges each Member State seconds to Eurojust — whose powers and administrative workload would be standardised across the Union. National prosecution services that rely on Eurojust for cross-border coordination are also affected, as are EU candidate countries and potential candidates, who would gain a clearer framework for cooperating with the agency. The proposal also touches Eurojust’s institutional partners — Europol, the EPPO, OLAF, AMLA and the EU Customs Authority — through the modernised data-exchange arrangements between them.
Budget and timeline
The Commission estimates that the reform would require an additional EU contribution of approximately €119 million over the 2028–2034 period, bringing Eurojust’s total EU contribution over that period to around €625 million, and would fund 87 additional staff phased in gradually. As with any Commission proposal, none of this is fixed: the text will be negotiated by the European Parliament and the Council, and both the substance and the timeline could shift materially before adoption.
Plus Ethics’s perspective
The governance redesign proposed here — separating strategic and administrative decision-making from day-to-day casework — follows a now-familiar template for EU decentralised agencies, and the underlying diagnosis (prosecutors spending half their time on paperwork) is a legitimate one to want to fix. What is worth watching closely, in our view, is the data protection dimension that comes bundled with this expanded mandate: Eurojust’s Chapter IV on the processing of operational personal data is also being reshaped as part of this reform, with implications for how long data on suspects, victims and witnesses can be retained and how the European Data Protection Supervisor exercises oversight. We will be covering that angle separately.
This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute individualised legal advice. The proposal discussed remains subject to negotiation in the European Parliament and the Council and may change materially before adoption.
Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/