Strasbourg, 8 July 2014

CEPEJ-SATURN (2014)7

EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR THE EFFICENCY OF JUSTICE

(CEPEJ)

Steering group of the SATURN Centre for judicial time management (CEPEJ-SATURN)

DATA TO BE SUPPLIED FOR THE PERIOD

1st JANUARY- 31st DECEMBER 2013

INTRODUCTION

Dear Member of the Pilot Courts Network,

CEPEJ SATURN Centre has aimed to collect and analyse data on pilot courts proceedings. This particular collection is addressed to selected pilot courts that have showed the capability to supply data on the general caseload, and also on some case categories that are considered quite similar in different countries and that they have been singled out through your contribution in one of the previous pilot courts meeting.

a. Selected pilot courts

The pilot courts selected for this exercise are as follows:

Appeal Pilot Courts

.	Country	Pilot Court	Jurisdiction	Notes
1	Czech Rep.	Ústi nad Labem	Appeal	Selected for civil , criminal, admin
2	Georgia	Tbilisi	Appeal	Selected for civil and criminal
3	Sweden	Göteborg	Appeal	Selected for civil

First instance Pilot Courts for civil matters

	Country	Pilot Court	Jurisdiction	Notes
1	Czech Rep.	Ústi nad Labem	Civ-Crim	Selected for civil, criminal, admin
2	Finland	Varsinais	Civ-Crim	Selected for civil and criminal
3	Italy	Turin	Civ-Crim	Selected for civil and criminal
4	Monaco		Civ-Crim	Selected for civil
5	Netherlands	Zutphen	Civ-Crim-Adm	Selected for civil
6	Sweden	Södertörn	Civ	Selected for civil
7	Azerbaïdjan	Khatai	Civ-Crim-Adm	Selected for civil and criminal
8	Azerbaïdjan	Yasamal	Civ-Crim-Adm	Selected for civil and criminal
9	Austria	Linz	Civ-Crim	Selected for civil
10	Denmark	Esbjerg	Civ-Crim	Selected for civil

First instance Pilot Courts for criminal matters

	Country	Pilot Court	Jurisdiction	Notes
1	Czech Rep.	Ústi nad Labem	Civ-Crim	Selected for civil, criminal, admin
2	Finland	Rovaniemi	Civ-Crim	Selected for criminal
3	Finland	Varsinais	Civ-Crim	Selected for civil and criminal
4	Italy	Turin	Civ-Crim	Selected for civil and criminal
5	Germany	Tiergarten-Berlin	Crim	Selected for criminal

Administrative Pilot Courts

	Country	Pilot Court	Jurisdiction	Notes
1	Czech Rep.	Ústi nad Labem	Appeal Admin	Selected for civil, criminal, admin
2	Estonia	Tallin	Admin	Selected for admin
3	Lithuania	Vilnius	Admin	Selected for admin

b. Goals of this data collection

CEPEJ SATURN has the mission to develop a  European observatory of judicial timeframes. This collection of data wants to check if it is possible to start building a more profitable engagement with the selected pilot courts for the development of such an Observatory. The first step is to verify if and how the selected pilot courts are able to provide more detailed data on the length of judicial proceeding, starting from the case categories that Saturn has found “less different” across the European jurisdictions.

c. Your task

We kindly invite you to fill in the enclosed Questionnaire for the jurisdictions of your Court.

The questionnaire has some quantitative data and some qualitative questions to be filled in an excel file (attached).

Please fill in the blank boxes with numbers and text, when required. In the boxes highlighted in yellow you do not have to write anything, they will make automatically the calculation of the indexes.

Below you will find a brief Explanatory note to have a first definition of the case categories. Please feel free to make remarks in each table to amend the definitions and then to better understand what kind of cases you include in the data reported.

Please report if the data are Not Available (NA). If this is the case, please make a note in the specific box at the end of each table to let us know the reasons for that.

Please let us also know how you calculate the average time from filing to disposition, as requested in Table 4.

Any further explanation on the data reported, problems or comment on the questionnaire will be highly appreciated.

Once you have filled in the attached excel file, You are invited to send it by e-mail to the following address: [email protected] by 22 August 2014.

Before sending back your reply, please change the name of the file to the name of your Court and the year of reference (2013). For instance: "Strasbourg_court2013.xls".

Should you have any question, please send an e-mail to [email protected]

Thanks for your collaboration.

For the CEPEJ-SATURN working group:

Jacques Bühler

EXPLANATORY NOTE

Please note that cases should be considered “incoming” when the court registers the case in its data base. Cases should be considered “resolved” when the court has taken a “final decision”, which means that the case is terminated or disposed.

Civil cases

·         Employment Dismissal: cases concerning the termination of (an) employment (contract) at the initiative of the employer (working in the private sector). It does not include dismissals of public officials, following a disciplinary procedure for instance.

·         Litigious divorce: Dissolution of a marriage by decision of a competent court; proceedings primarily relating to a dispute over the divorce itself or its consequences.

·         Bankruptcy: Legal status of an individual or organisation incapable of repaying debts to creditors. The data must include bankruptcy declarations issued by a court and all the cases linked to the bankruptcy (recovery of credits, liquidation of property, payment of creditors, debt reconstructing, “individual-private” bankruptcy, etc).

·         Family matters: all cases related to family proceedings excluding litigious divorce

·         Intellectual property: Any dispute over copyright, brands, patents, industrial models, etc.

·         House rentals:any type of proceedings involving a tenant and landlord (property owner).

Administrative cases

·         Taxation of individuals: cases concerning disputes over decisions taken by an administrative authority relating to levying of income and wealth tax from natural persons. This does not cover taxation of legal persons.

Criminal cases

·         Intentional homicide:the intentional killing of a person. Where possible the figures should include: assault leading to death, euthanasia, infanticide and exclude suicide assistance (according to the definition of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice). The data should not include attempts.

·         Robbery: concerns stealing from a person with force or threat of force. If possible these figures should include: muggings (bag-snatching, armed theft, etc) and exclude pick pocketing, extortion and blackmail (according to the definition of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice). The data should not include attempts.

·         Drug-related offences: any case related to the cultivation, production, sale, supply, transportation, importation, exportation and financing of drug operations, as well as the consumption and possession of large quantities and the possession of small quantities.

·         Rape: act of sexual intercourse with an individual without his or her consent, through force or the threat of force.

·         Corruption offences: caseswhere a civil servant offers or accepts a financial or other advantage in exchange for favourable treatment. If possible, these figures should include: active and passive corruption, incitement to corruption, complicity, corruption of national civil servants; corruption of foreign civil servants; extortion by civil servants; offering advantages to civil servants without any immediate advantage, and attempted corruption. The data should not include corruption in the private sector, extortion (except by civil servants) or corruption of voters.

·         Child sexual exploitation: any case involving the sexual exploitation or sexual abuse of children

Indexes

As mentioned, you do not have to calculate the following indexes, but just for your information, they are calculated, as usual, as follows:

·         Clearance rate= (resolved cases / incoming cases) x 100

·         Case turnover ratio = number of resolved cases / number of unresolved cases at the end of the year

·         Disposition Time= 365 / Case turnover ratio

Personnel

As known, there are several and different positions of court personnel in the Member States. We kindly ask you to fill in Table 4 to have a first indication of the personnel numbers of your court. As usual, please feel free to make comments and remarks to allow us to improve the data collection and our common understanding of the different functions and positions. We tried to include the most “common” job positions in the court, but please enrich the table with your comments. Since some Member States have “Rechtspfleger” we add a specific box to be filled in. Rechtspfleger can be defined as: “a clerk of court who has the power to act as a judge in some limited matters”.

Please also count and report in the related box the units of personnel for Full Time Equivalent (FTE) (e.g. 2 part time professional judges/clerks = 1 professional judge/clerk to be counted; or 2 part time judges/clerks at 75% of the time = 1,5 full time judges/clerk).