cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11881634

A first-ever agreement between the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate - signed in September this years - raises eyebrows. Given the European Parliament’s repeated majority assessments on the risks of police and judicial cooperation with China, some tough questions ought to be asked of the European Chief Prosecutor and her successor.

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Following Beijing’s unilateral imposition of the National Security Law on Hong Kong, the European Court of Human Rights’ 2022 finding of a “general situation of violence” in China’s judicial and detention system, and the discovery of illegal “Overseas Chinese police service centers” set up in blatant violation of European countries’ sovereignty, European institutions and Member States had put a temporary brake on enhancing such cooperation.

That’s been changing rapidly. In the past two years, Serbia and Hungary signed new bilateral extradition treaties with China – despite the European Parliament’s incessant calls for their suspension across the Union. Hungary also signed a new agreement for joint police patrols; patrols that have in the meantime recommenced on Croatian and Serbian soil.

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But a cooperation agreement between the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) and China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate sends a whole other message; one that deserves public scrutiny.

The agreement provides for cooperation in criminal matters and mutual legal assistance, as well as visits, trainings, logistical and technical support, and “other forms of cooperation”.

While the agreement provides for information-sharing within the ambit of the areas of cooperation, it does exclude the sharing of personal data between the parties.

That positive note however still leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

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The most glaring one pertaining to the statutes the EPPO is bound by and which imposes standards of strict independence on the institution, as well as an obligation to uphold the fundamental human rights enshrined in the European Charter.

Article 5(2) of Council Regulation (EU) 2017/1939, which establishes the EPPO, states the “EPPO shall be bound by the principles of rule of law and proportionality in all its activities;” and Article 6(1) explicitly states: “The EPPO shall be independent,” with its prosecutors barred from taking instructions “from any person external to the EPPO, any Member State of the European Union or any institution, body, office or agency of the Union.”

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Now compare that to the SPP who in its most recent annual work report (published March 2026) openly touts its strict adherence to the Chinese Communist “Party’s absolute leadership over procuratorial work” – a staple in China, where the Party’s control over every state institution has been enshrined in the Constitution, and every institution’s primary task is to uphold the Party’s rule.

It is a system whose rules are written to undermine the fundamental freedoms established by the European Charter on Human Rights. A system whose police and prosecutorial “investigative” techniques continue to be denounced by UN human rights bodies and courts across Europe as constituting torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and forced confessions – to name but a few. As the European Court of Human Rights put it: “a general situation of violence.”

The Council Regulation establishing the EPPO makes it accountable to the European Parliament, to the Council and to the Commission. Given the European Parliament’s repeated majority assessments on the risks of police and judicial cooperation with China, some tough questions ought to be asked of the Chief Prosecutor and her successor.

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