SIRIUS Annual Advisory Board Meeting: Celebrating a Full Partnership Between Europol and Eurojust

With more than 1,200 new registered members last year, the release of the EU Digital Evidence Situation Report 2020 and a growing hub of information and resources for EU authorities, the SIRIUS project hosted yesterday its annual Advisory Board meeting to present its 2020 main achievements. This event was the perfect opportunity for both agencies to highlight ambitious new activities for the upcoming year.

This event brought together representatives of the European Commission, CEPOL, the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (UNCTED), the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United States Department of Justice, the European Cybercrime Training and Education Group (ECTEG), the European Judicial Network (EJN), the European Judicial Cybercrime Network (EJCN) and the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN)

Building on a strong record of past successes, in 2020 SIRIUS reached 5,000 members via its platform on the Europol Platform for Experts. This space, dedicated to law enforcement and judicial authorities, now reaches all EU Member States and 17 additional third countries, and serves as a recognised centre of excellence at EU level in the field of electronic evidence.

The event was also a chance to showcase the second edition of the EU Digital Evidence Situation Report, which focused on the status of EU authorities in retrieving electronic data held by foreign-based online service providers (OSPs), and highlighted the prevalence of electronic evidence in investigations today. Members of the SIRIUS community now have access to guidelines on over 40 different OSPs, and benefit from 36 tools created by their colleagues.

Finally, participants were given an overview of the latest training activities and interactive games developed for the SIRIUS community and designed to facilitate investigations for law enforcement and judicial authorities of EU Member States.

Looking ahead, the project team will further leverage its established visibility and position to support an even larger number of law enforcement and judicial authorities in developing the knowledge related to the retrieval of electronic data. The creation of new and additional resources tailored for an even larger community of experts will help SIRIUS reach new heights in 2021.

The SIRIUS project, co-implemented by Europol and Eurojust, is a central reference point in the EU for knowledge sharing on cross-border access to electronic evidence. It offers a variety of services, such as guidelines, trainings and tools, to help with accessing data held by online service providers. These services are available to law enforcement and judicial authorities via a platform and an application. To this day, SIRIUS serves a community of competent authorities from 44 countries, representing all EU Member States and a growing number of third countries.

The SIRIUS project has received funding from the European Commission’s Service for Foreign Policy (FPI) under grant agreement No PI/2017/391-896