Investigating crime in an interconnected society: will the new and updated EU judicial environment remove the barriers to justice?

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the current issues and proposes legal remedies for removing the barriers to gathering cross-border electronic evidence for a more efficient fight against crime and cybercrime. Governments’ attempts to fight cybercrime face several barriers, due to an inconsistent understanding of the problem in the search for cross-border e-evidence, the legality of the data being sought and the rules for cooperation with the service providers of communication services. The paper briefly presents the legal scene in the EU, the efforts related to the implementation of Directive 2014/41/EU, specifying the European Investigation Order in criminal matters, and the provision of legal procedures for cross-border e-evidence collection proposed by the new EU act for production and preservation orders. A new model of categorizing the forms and the type of data that reside on communication networks in a territory different from the location of the criminal act is presented as well. The results of the European project LIVE_FOR, intended to raise the awareness of the European investigation order among legal professionals are also presented. The examination of the new data model as well as the new procedures for e-evidence collection promise to remove the current barriers and offer more efficient justice.