The Department of Information Policy & Governance (IPG) within the Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences at the University of Malta is part of a consortium recently awarded EU funding under the DG Justice programme to undertake a 30 months (2018-2020) project entitled "Strategic AssessmenT for LAW and Police Cooperation - SAT-LAW".
The project, which benefits from a EUR 907.590 grant is aimed at contributing to a bi-annual case-based report to the European Commission on the application of Directive 2014/41/EU. SAT-LAW will help national authorities strengthen their capacity of addressing issues related to judicial cooperation in criminal matters, train judges and prosecutors to better address related issues and increase overall awareness on the subject.
The project will use quantitative and qualitative research techniques to achieve a better understanding of the state of implementation of Directive 2104/41/EU across Europe. It will also organise 10 Judicial Living Labs addressing different topics such as: proportionality in the use of SITs and surveillance; EIO and e-evidence; and implementation models in different adversarial and/or inquisitor centred national procedures. The project will also produce a Toolkit with Promising Practices in National, European and ECtHR law and multiple blended training courses.
The target audience of the SAT-LAW project are 300 judges, public prosecutors and lawyers, 1000 law enforcement personnel, 1000 prison staff and surveillance judges as well as 500 private experts across Europe.
The team from the Department of Information Policy & Governance, led by Professor Joseph Cannataci and Dr. Aitana Radu, will be working closely with the other project partners, namely the Italian Ministry of Justice, KEMEA (Greece), University of Granada (Spain), European University of Cyprus, AGENFOR International (Italy), Euro-Arab Foundation (Spain), Center for the Study of Democracy (Bulgaria), Czech Technical University in Prague (Czech Republic) and the University of Tolouse (France). SAT-LAW is part of IPG's strategic involvement in research projects aimed at reinforcing its leading role in a select group of Universities pioneering the development of Security Science at a global level.