Strasbourg, 8 December 2011

CEPEJ(2011)10

europEAN COMMISSION FOR THE EFFICIENCY OF Justice (CEPEJ)

18th plenary meeting (7-8 December 2011)

Abridged report

A.   FOREWORD

The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) held its 18th plenary meeting in Strasbourg on 7 – 8 December 2011. The meeting was chaired by Mr Georg STAWA (Austria), Vice-President of the CEPEJ.

The agenda appears in the Appendix.

B.   LIST OF ITEMS DISCUSSED AND DECISIONS TAKEN BY THE CEPEJ

1.   Information by the members of the CEPEJ and the Secretariat

The CEPEJ

§  took note of the information given by its members and its Secretariat who participated in various fora where the work of the CEPEJ was introduced and discussed;

2.   Recent developments in the judicial field in the Council of Europe member states

§  took note of the information given by the representatives of Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Norway, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" and the United Kingdom on recent domestic developments in the judicial field and invited its members to forward to the Secretariat written information and useful references which could be included in the area "country profiles" of its web site;

§  took note of the comprehensive presentation by the representative of Azerbaijan on the process for  judicial modernisation in his country;

 

3.   Study Session

§  took note of the discussions in workshops aiming, within the framework of the evaluation cycle, at strengthening a common understanding and treatment of the main concepts on the functioning of judicial systems (in particular the funding of court systems, the management of judicial and non judicial staff, case flow management in courts and the evaluation of the court and judge activity),  agreed that a summing up of the discussions of each workshop would be forwarded to each participant and national correspondent and entrusted the Secretariat to complete the explanatory note to the evaluation scheme according to these discussions and to forward these complementary comments to the national correspondents;

called on the member statesto pursue the re-organisation of their systems for collecting statistical information so as to facilitate regular supply of the information requested by the CEPEJ in order to fulfil its essential mission for advancing understanding and analysis of the functioning of justice in Europe;

§  welcomed the research by the scientific expert, Daniela Piana (Italy), on "Monitoring and evaluation as new modes of judicial governance" and confirmed its interest in pursuing cooperation with her on this issue;

4.     Evaluation of European judicial systems: 2010 – 2012 cycle

§  recalled that, in order to enable a smooth evaluation process and the adoption of the report in early July 2012, the replies to the Evaluation Scheme must, as an imperative, be submitted to the Secretariat through the electronic questionnaire before 31 December 2011 (it being understood that a more flexible timeframe was agreed only for federal states), and invited its members and the national correspondents to take appropriate measures accordingly;

§  took note that the Secretariat had appointed Ms Svetlana SPOIALA (Moldova) as scientific expert entrusted with judicial data processing and agreed that additional scientific legal experts might be engaged for contributing to the comments on the information thus presented, according to budgetary availabilities;

§  entrusted the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL to prepare the draft report  "European judicial systems – Edition 2012" and to submit it to the 19^th plenary meeting, so that it could be officially published, if possible, within the framework of the Conference of the Ministers of Justice of the Council of Europe in Vienna in September 2012;

§  reaffirmed its availability to work in close cooperation with the European Commission, so that the CEPEJ's specific know how, through its evaluation process, can be of benefit to the European Commission's own purposes;

instructed its Bureau and the CEPEJ-GT-EVALto follow upon possible requests made by the European Commission in this framework and to organise the work accordingly, provided that the necessary budgetary means were available and keeping the CEPEJ informed of the relevant developments;

§  agreed to base the project "Efficiency and quality of justice" of the Eastern Partnership Joint Programme between the Council of Europe and the European Commission on the findings of the evaluation cycle and to cooperate closely with the five member states concerned - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – in the implementation of this project, so as to strengthen synergies between the work of the CEPEJ and targeted cooperation activities; 

§  took note of the draft report by the experts and the Secretariat on the peer evaluation visits on judicial statistics to the Netherlands, Turkey and Austria, and invited the states concerned and the experts to complete this report;

agreed to pursue the cycle of evaluation visits in 2012 in Azerbaijan and invited members states to propose to the Secretariat, if possible before 15 January 2012, further candidatures;

§  welcomed the initiative of the Ministry of Justice of Azerbaijan for translating and publishing the 2008 et 2010 editions of the CEPEJ's evaluation report;

5.     Quality of justice

§  supported the ongoing work within the CEPEJ-GT-QUAL, in particular as regards the preparation of guidelines on the territorial organisation of the court system (judicial map) for which it invited the representatives of the countries concerned to appoint contact points;

invited the Group to coordinate its work with the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL and the Steering Group of the SATURN Centre so as to define quality indicators of justice;

§  invited the volunteer courts in the member states to indicate to the Secretariat their candidature for organising within the court a coaching programme aimed at organising court user satisfaction surveys based on the CEPEJ Handbook and invited its members to inform widely the courts in their states of this opportunity;

6.   SATURN Centre on judicial time management

§  agreed with the Strategic plan for the SATURN Centre prepared by the Steering group and instructed the Steering Group to organise its work accordingly, both in the qualitative and quantitative approaches aimed at setting up a European observatory on judicial timeframes, while drawing in particular on the expertise of the Network of Pilot Courts;

§  invited the volunteer courts in the member states to indicate to the Secretariat their candidature for organising within the court a coaching programme aimed at implementing the SATURN tools for judicial time management based on the CEPEJ Guide and invited its members to inform widely the courts in their states of this opportunity;

7.   Targeted co-operation with member states

§  approved its experts' report "on the process for the selection of judges in Azerbaijan" (CEPEJ-COOP(2011)1);

§  took note of the information given by the experts and the Secretariat following their visit to Malta on the implementation of the experts' recommendations on the functioning of the judicial system (21 – 22 November 2011);

§  invited the member states which would like to benefit from the cooperation of the CEPEJ to forward their proposals to the Secretariat as soon as possible, so that they may be considered by the Bureau within the framework of the implementation of the programme of activities for 2012, subject to availability of budget;

§  invited the members of the CEPEJ representing the beneficiary states of the cooperation programmes of the Council of Europe and the European Commission to play an active role in implementing these programmes, namely to strengthen synergies between the CEPEJ's work and these cooperation activities;

8.   Co-operation with the Lisbon Network

§  took note of the proposals for cooperation proposed by the Bureau of the Lisbon Network and  entrusted the Bureau of the CEPEJ to define the working modalities so as to implement such proposals;

9.     Activity programme of the CEPEJ

§  adopted its Activity programme for 2012 and 2013 (CEPEJ(2011)6) and decided to forward it to the Committee of Ministers so that it can take note of it;

§  invited the member states, through the CEPEJ members, where appropriate, to propose to the Secretariat by 15 January 2012 qualified experts to participate in the working groups (CEPEJ-GT-EVAL, CEPEJ-GT-QUAL and Steering group of the SATURN Centre) and entrusted its Bureau to appoint members of these working groups taking into account these proposals;

§  thanked the representative of Maltafor having offered to host in 2012 the plenary meeting of the Network of Pilot courts and a meeting of the Steering group of the SATURN Centre;

10.  Relations between the CEPEJ and the other bodies of the Council of Europe

§  took note of the information on the activities of the Consultative Council of European Judges (CCJE), the Consultative Council of European Prosecutors (CCPE), the European Committee of Legal Cooperation (CDCJ);

§  welcomed in particular the Opinion N°14 (2011) of the CCJE on “Justice and information technologies” which is of utmost relevance for improving the efficiency of the court system while safeguarding fundamental principles and confirmed its availability to provide relevant support to the CCJE in the drafting of its opinions on "the specialisation of judges" and "the relationship between judges and lawyers", in particular through the results of its evaluation process; it also stressed the relevance of the CCJE's work on the specialisation of judges within the framework of the CEPEJ-GT-QUAL's work on the organisation of the judicial map;

§  confirmed its availability to provide relevant support to the CCPE in the drafting of its opinion on "the management of the means of the prosecution services" on the basis of the CEPEJ's work;

§  agreed to cooperate with the CDCJ as a follow up to Resolution N°1 of the 30^th Conference of the Ministers of Justice on a modern, transparent and efficient justice, to provide it with technical guidelines on the revision of various Council of Europe recommendations on court management and e-justice, instructed its working groups to study the provisions of these recommendations in the light of the CEPEJ's work and agreed that CEPEJ members could be involved when appropriate in the CDCJ's drafting group(s) in revising the recommendations;

§  took note of the Council of Europe's Guidelines on child friendly justice and agreed to take them into account where appropriate within the framework of its work;

11.  Cooperation with the European Union

§  took note of the information given by the representatives of Poland, speaking on behalf of the outgoing presidency of the European Union, on recent developments within the Union in the field of justice;

§  expressed its wish to pursue the joint organisation of the « Crystal Scales of Justice » in 2012, together with the European Commission;

§  thanked the member states and judicial institutions which actively participated in the European Day of Justice in 2011, and in particular the First instance court of Toulouse (France) which organised the main event of this Day on 25 October 2011 and invited its members to promote the European Day of Justice in their country around 25 October 2012 ;

§  took note of the studies carried out by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency and confirmed its availability to pursue its cooperation with it; it invited in particular the representative of the Agency to introduce the study on access to justice at the next plenary meeting of the CEPEJ;

12.  Observers with the CEPEJ

§  took noteof the information given by its Observers, and in particular the International Union of Judicial Officers (UIHJ), the European Union of Rechtspfleger (EUR), Magistrats Européens pour la Démocratie et les Libertés (MEDEL), the European Network of the Judicial Councils (ENJC), the Council of the Bars and Law Society of the European Union (CCBE) and the World Bank and thanked them for their concrete contribution to its activities and invitedthem to further contribute to the implementation of its activity programme;

§  took note in particular of the current exercise carried out by the International Union of Judicial Officers to collect information worldwide on the profession of bailiff and confirmed its interest in the results of this exercise.

13.  Any other business

§  welcomed the publication of the book by Petra Pekkanen (Finland): "Delay reduction in courts of justice – possibilities and challenges of process improvement in professional public organizations" and invited its members who wish to get this book to indicate it to the Secretariat.

AGENDA

1.     Opening of the meeting

2.     Adoption of the agenda    

3.     Information by the President of the CEPEJ, CEPEJ members and the Secretariat

4.     Recent developments in the judicial field in the Council of Europe Member states

5.     Study session – Sharing common concepts for evaluating the functioning of the court systems Four workshops (participants are invited to choose to seat in one of them): §  Funding of the court system (Moderator: Georg Stawa) -      composition of the court and the justice budgets -      court fees §  Judicial and non judicial staff (Moderator: Stéphane Leyenberger) -      various categories of judges -      organisation of the staff attached to judges and prosecutors -      disciplinary measures against judges and prosecutors §  Case flow management (Moderator: Jacques Bühler) -      numbering cases per categories -      measuring lengths of proceedings §  Evaluation of the court and judge activity (Moderator: Frans Van der Doelen) Plenary session: summing up of the discussions in workshops Plenary session: Monitoring and evaluation as new modes of judicial governance by Daniela Piana, Researcher, Department of Political Science, University of Bologna (Italy)

6.     Evaluation of European judicial systems : Cycle 2010 - 2012

Rapporteur: Georg Stawa (Austria), Member of the CEPEJ's Bureau and GT-EVAL

      i.        2010 – 2012 cycle: data collection and fulfilment of the electronic questionnaire by the national correspondents - tour de table

    ii.                                                     Preparation of the Evaluation Report – 2012 Edition

§  Exchange of views with the scientific expert entrusted with data collection, processing and analysis

§  Calendar and procedure for preparing the report

   iii.                                                     Implementation of the pilot peer evaluation co-operation process

                                                                                                                       

7.     Quality of justice (CEPEJ-GT-QUAL)

(i)    Information on the on-going work

(ii)   Implementation of the Court Coaching Programme for organising court user satisfaction surveys

8.     SATURN Centre on judicial time management

Rapporteur: Jacques Bühler (Switzerland), Chair of the Steering group

(i)    Qualitative approach: implementation of the Court Coaching Programme for implementing the SATURN tools on judicial time management

(ii)   Quantitative approach: cooperation with the Network of Pilot courts and other information

(iii)  Introduction to an overall strategy

9.     Targeted cooperation of the CEPEJ with member States

(i)                                                Azerbaijan: process for selecting judges (18 – 20 September 2011)

Rapporteur: Ramin Gurbanov (Azerbaijan)

(ii)                                               Follow up meeting to the assessment of the operation of the court system in Malta

(21 – 22 November 2011)

Rapporteur: Francesco Depasquale (Malta)

(iii)                                              Requests for 2012

10.  Discussion of the draft Activity programme of the CEPEJ for 2012 and 2013 in view of its adoption

Rapporteur: Gabor Szeplaki-Nagy (Hungary)

11.  Co-operation with the Lisbon Network

12.  Relations between the CEPEJ and the other bodies of the Council of Europe

(i)    Consultative Council of European Judges (CCJE)

(ii)   Consultative Council of European Prosecutors (CCPE)

(iii) European Committee on Legal Cooperation (CDCJ)

§  Co-operation on the revision of CoE's Recommendations regarding the modernisation of the justice systems

(iv)  European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC)

(v)   Steering Committee for Human Rights (CDDH)

(vi)  Introduction to the CoE's Guidelines on child friendly justice

Rapporteur: Josiane Bigot, Scientific expert (France)

13.  Co-operation with the European Union

(i)    Last developments within the European Union in the judicial field

(ii)   European Day of Justice

14.  Observers to the CEPEJ

15.  Any other business