The Budapest Convention on Cybercrime is the most relevant international treaty on cybercrime and electronic evidence, with currently 66 Parties and 10 Observer States. Work on the Second Additional Protocol on enhanced cooperation commenced in September 2017 and is expected to be finalized by the end of 2021. Nevertheless, mutual legal assistance in criminal cases concerning cybercrime and electronic evidence remains and will continue to remain a challenge due to a multitude of factors. Some of these entail the gaps in legal regulations, definitions of data and implementation of procedural powers, significant delays in processing and execution of incoming MLA requests and the need for translating such requests, just to name a few.

The CyberEast project, a joint project of the European Union and the Council of Europe, has conducted the Second regional Meeting on the Development of Mutual Legal Assistance Guidelines, during 26 – 28 April 2021, online. Each participating country designated specialized prosecutors and/or members of the central authority responsible for dealing with mutual legal assistance in cases of cybercrime and electronic evidence in criminal cases and engaged in international cooperation matters. In addition, the international experts and partners involved on international cooperation on cybercrime and electronic evidence, such as Eurojust, also contributed to the event.

The participants have reviewed and adopted the draft text of the Guidelines on the subject matter developed by a team of international experts of the Council of Europe, based on the previously agreed principles during the Regional Meeting that took place on 9 December 2020, as well as the text of the Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention.