The PRE-RIGHTS project addresses the growing need for a balanced, rights-based approach to judicial and police cooperation in the context of preventive criminal justice. The project aims to strengthen coherence between preventive security measures and the EU legal framework, ensuring that judicial guarantees are not undermined by emerging hybrid models of investigation and enforcement.
The project pursues four main objectives:
- Promote a balanced implementation of the EU Security Agenda, particularly its preventive dimension, through judicial and police cooperation;
- Ensure coherence between intelligence-led policing methods and the use of European Investigation Orders (EIO) and European Arrest Warrants (EAW), in order to prevent excessive de-juridicalisation of criminal procedures;
- Safeguard the compatibility of preventive security measures in prison with the principles and provisions of Framework Decisions 2008/909/JHA, 2008/947/JHA, and 2009/829/JHA, thereby preventing desocialisation and ensuring respect for fundamental rights;
- Analyse the impact of preventive policies and practices on mutual legal assistance (MLA) and data exchange mechanisms in light of the Brexit transition.
The project is structured around five key work packages:
- WP1: Establishment of a permanent network of Ministries of Justice focused on preventive justice policies;
- WP2: A comprehensive EU-wide survey to map existing practices;
- WP3: Fusion and consolidation of findings across legal and institutional domains;
- WP4: Judicial Living Labs engaging practitioners in applied case-based learning;
- WP5: Dissemination and stakeholder outreach.
Target beneficiaries include 500 members of the judiciary (judges, investigative judges, prosecutors, and lawyers), 200 law enforcement officials, 500 prison police and staff including surveillance judges, 50 intelligence agency managers, and 100 legal and academic experts. The project also engages 27 Ministries of Justice, 10 Ministries of Interior, and 10 intelligence agencies across EU Member States.
Expected results:
- Strengthened institutional capacity of national judicial authorities and security actors to address cross-border prevention through a legally grounded approach;
- Enhanced alignment between EU acquis and the jurisprudence of the CJEU and ECtHR in the field of criminal prevention;
- Increased specialisation of prosecutors and judges in preventive justice mechanisms;
- Judicial implementation of the EU Security Agenda, reinforcing rule-of-law safeguards;
- More coherent application of mutual legal assistance instruments and data exchange with third countries, specifically in the area of judicial prevention.
PRE-RIGHTS contributes to embedding the preventive dimension of EU security policy within a framework of legal accountability, proportionality, and fundamental rights protection, thus ensuring its sustainable integration into national justice systems.