ELEVADMIN

The project at a glance

Start date:

01 May 2023
Duration in months:

55
Funding:

Union Anti-Fraud Programme (EUAF) / Fonds National de la Recherche (FNR)
Principal Investigator(s):

Stanislaw TOSZA

About

With the ever-increasing digitalisation of almost every aspect of human activities any type of infringement – be it criminal or administrative – leaves digital traces, which may be crucial as evidence in punitive proceedings. Over the past years, the debate over access to electronic evidence gained prominence as regards access to data for criminal investigations. The European Union has recently adopted the Regulation on European Production and Preservation Orders for electronic evidence in criminal matters, which would allow law enforcement authorities in one Member State to compel service providers in another Member State to produce data without engaging the authorities of the latter. Notably absent from these debates and initiatives is administrative law enforcement. Yet, electronic evidence is no less crucial for punitive administrative proceedings. While, due to privacy limitation concerns, the access to electronic evidence will arguably not be as broad as for criminal investigations, it will be increasingly more difficult to miss the golden opportunity that access to evidence through service providers offers for effective investigations. Given the exponential increase of significance of this type of evidence, ELEVADMIN aims to examine the existing legal framework at the national and EU level, as well as to understand the practice of gathering electronic evidence from Online Service Providers for administrative investigations. The third objective of ELEVADMIN will be to examine whether OLAF should have such powers, identify parallels in other punitive administrative proceedings and provide parameters for such a policy goal. In order to realise its objectives, ELEVADMIN will perform a thorough comparative analysis of law and practice at EU and national level. The comparative analysis will examine five areas of punitive enforcement to establish legal possibilities to request electronic evidence from ISPs or transfer such evidence from another proceeding. At the national level it will be conducted in the following Member States: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Finland.