Author: Veronica Carbone – Law student Milano-Bicocca University
Subcommittee: Create
Date: 12/06/2023
This week, the University of Milan-Bicocca with its successful Jean Monnet Module “EPPO: a step forward in integration” (STEPPO) had the honour of participating in the celebration of the second anniversary of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Luxembourg.
On the 5th and 6th of June was held a prestigious conference at Université du Luxembourg, in which important personalities of the European legal field discussed the nature and the challenges of the new EPPO body.
Petr Klement at the EPPO conference
The conference “EPPO the way forward: new potentials and challenges”, organised in collaboration with the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, offered the occasion to discuss important issues such as:
- the level of implementation of the EPPO Regulation in the Member States;
- the integration of a new European judicial body into the EU judicial space;
- new developments in EU substantive criminal law and their impact on the EPPO;
- the extension of the EPPO’s material scope of competence to crimes other than crimes against the financial interests of the EU;
- EPPO’s cooperation with non-participating Member States and practical challenges in the cooperation of the EPPO with third countries.
From the high-profile speakers, from various EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies, national practitioners, and prominent academic experts, there were some lecturers of the “STEPPO” Jean Monnet Module:
Petr Klement (European Public Prosecutor – Czech Republic), who talked about practical obstacles to the exercise of EPPO’s functions due to the non-conformity issues of the national “implementing” legislation and Danilo Ceccarelli (Italian European Public Prosecutor), who treated the status of the EPPO as a European judicial actor.
Fabrizia Bemer and Laura Kövesi at the EPPO conference
Furthermore, deserves to be mentioned the participation of Laura Codruța Kövesi (European Chief Prosecutor), with her inspiring opening speech and Michael Anthony Collins (Advocate General of the European Court of Justice, CJEU), who gave a keynote speech on the role of the CJEU in EPPO proceedings.
Last but not least, Jean Monnet Module “EPPO: a step forward in integration”, represented by Fabrizia Bemer (Chair of the Committee Virtual Reality of Steppo Project and Senior Manager of the Office of International Judicial Cooperation and Senior expert trainer in EIO training for projects co-financed by European Commission) and Veronica Carbone (law student and co-chair of Create Subcommittee), was invited to present a new pilot project developed over the last few months.
This important invitation was possible thanks to Fabrizia Bemer, Prof. Dr Benedetta Ubertazzi (Associate Professor of EU Law University Bicocca of Milan, and coordinator of the Jean Monnet module “The EPPO: a step forward in integration) and Prof. Dr Katalin Ligeti (full professor of European and international criminal law at Université du Luxembourg and the Director of Department of Law, Economics and Finance at Université du Luxembourg).
The law student Veronica Carbone, who talked about the VR game at the EPPO conference
During the Luxembourgish conference, the first Virtual Reality Game on EPPO was presented. This project was born as a tool to facilitate the understanding of complicated issues such as the new EPPO body, thanks to the possibility to allow the user to experience the obstacles and problems that emerge in real working environments; both of which are unfamiliar to the students as well as to the legal practitioners. The presentation illustrated the project’s objectives, the reasons for its birth, the categories of players who have tried it, the “experiment” with the classes from Milan high school and the screenshots of the game screen.
This STEPPO project was highly appreciated by the audience, who interacted and showed interest in trying the VR game. Moreover, Fabrizia Bemer went to a preparatory meeting at the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, in which she could to discuss the future of the VR game project with the European Public Prosecutor Petr Klement.
Petr Klement at the EPPO’s HQ
But that’s not all, because participating in the EPPO conference allowed us to meet many relevant personalities in the legal field, with whom we hope to develop new future collaborations, such as the future interviews with Nicholas Franssen, Counsellor at the Ministry of Justice and Security of Netherlands, who will talk about the EPPO’s cooperation with non-participating Member States and Grazia Maria Vagliasindi, Associate Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Catania, who will discuss the proposal on the protection of the environment through criminal law.
In conclusion, we can proudly say that STEPPO and its VR Game have conquered Luxembourg and thanks to this success, we are delighted to inform our readers that will follow exciting news! So make sure to stay updated via our blog STEPPO and all the social network pages.