Strasbourg, 30 September 2009
CEPEJ-SATURN(2009)6
EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR THE EFFICENCY OF JUSTICE
(CEPEJ)
Steering Group of the SATURN Centre for judicial time management
(CEPEJ-SATURN)
6th meeting
Strasbourg, 9 and 11 September 2009
MEETING REPORT
Report prepared by the Secretariat
Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs
1. The Steering Group of the SATURN Centre for the study and analysis of judicial time management held its fifth meeting in Strasbourg on 9 and 11 September 2009, with Mr Jacques BÜHLER (Switzerland) in the chair. The members of the Steering Group took part in the 4th plenary meeting of the Network of pilot courts on 10 September (see the conclusions in appendix III).
2. The agenda and the list of participants appear respectively in Appendices I and II to this report.
1. Information by the Secretariat
3. The Secretariat introduced to the Group the new Communication officer of the Justice Division, Annette SATTEL.
4. The Chairman of the Steering Group recalled the invitation of the Swiss authorities to organise the next meeting of the Steering Group, as well as the plenary meeting of the Network of pilot courts in Geneva on 12 – 14 April 2010, within the framework of the Swiss Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.
2. Implementation of the Guidelines for judicial time management
5. 25 pilot courts had replied to the questionnaire prepared by the Steering group to assess the relevance of the Guidelines and in particular its appendix. The answers served as a basis for a discussion during the 4th plenary meeting of the Network of pilot courts, which led to limited amendments to the Guidelines (CEPEJ(2008)8 Rev). Some of these amendments would have to be discussed within the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL, as the Guidelines on judicial statistics and the Guidelines on judicial time management share the same Appendix (EUGMONT). The Steering group recommended to publish the Guidelines under a well designed format and to ensure a wide dissemination, including through appropriate translations.
6. The Group agreed to request pilot courts to fulfil the 4 tables and to try to calculate the two main indicators (clearance rate and disposition time) contained in EUGMONT and to send their replies to the Secretariat by mi January 2010. These replies would then be analysed by the Secretariat, with the support of Marco FABRI, as scientific expert, so as to be discussed at the next meeting of the Steering group in April 2010.
7. The Group recommended to organised the pilot courts on clusters, which could be specifically followed by a CEPEJ's expert. The work of the plot courts at their next plenary session could be organised in taking into account these clusters.
8. The Group entrusted the Secretariat to organise with Marco FABRI, as scientific expert, specific terms of reference for a study aimed at defining indicators of qualitative nature enabling to gather information on the measures undertaken to improve the case flow management including inter alia:
§ the analysis of the existing information given by the pilot courts, indicating the missing information which should be further requested to them or to other bodies (to be identified); he could in particular take into account the CEPEJ's Time management Checklist;
§ proposals for the organisation of the work of pilot courts according to clusters.
3. Towards a European observatory of judicial timeframes
9. The Chairman recalled the long term objective of the on-going work: to be able to present relevant maps and figures on judicial timeframes per types of cases in Europe.
10. The Steering Group agreed to enlarge the use of the Guidelines and its EUGMONT statistics to a wider sample of courts in each country. The Steering group would define, per type of country, criteria for setting up the appropriate sample of courts (minimal number of first instance courts, appeal courts, specialized courts, depending on the size of the country and the judicial organisation).
11. On behalf of Switzerland, Jacques BÜHLER indicated that a software used by the Swiss Federal Court would be introduced at the next plenary meeting of the Network of pilot courts in Geneva (April 2010); this IT tool enables to manage the statistics requested by the EUGMONT appendix. This IT tool could be made available as an Open source to all member states and courts if it proves to be useful.
12. Alan UZELAC proposed that the Observatory focuses each year on a specific legal field (civil, criminal, administrative law fields), to enhance the relevance and the coherence of its work.
4. Any other business
13. The experts proposed to work with the pilot courts to test the concrete implementation of the various tools designed by the CEPEJ: guidelines, checklists, according to a protocol specifically designed with a given court – in full cooperation with the Ministry of Justice where appropriate - taking into account its specific situation.
14. John JOHNSEN proposed:
§ to identify the relevant provisions in various CEPEJ's documents which could be the subject of such "in court tests";
§ to prepare such a pilot protocol with a given court in a Nordic country.
15. Alan UZELAC proposed to find a way for highlighting those courts which are able to cope with the CEPEJ's Guidelines.
16. The Steering Group agreed to participate in the work of the DH-RE aimed at preparing a Recommendation on effective remedies for excessive length of proceedings. The stressed that this work should duly take into account the CEPEJ's tools on judicial time management
aNNExE I
AGENDA / ORDRE DU JOUR
1. Adoption of the agenda / Adoption de l’ordre du jour
2. Information by the President of the Group and the Secretariat /
Information du Président du Groupe et du Secrétariat
3. Implementation of the Guidelines for judicial time management /
Mise en œuvre des Lignes directrices pour la maîtrise du temps judiciaire
§ Study of the answers and comments by the Pilot courts /
Etude des réponses et commentaires des Tribunaux-référents
§ Possible amendments to the Guidelines /
Possibles amendements aux Lignes directrices
4. Cooperation with the Network of Pilot courts /
Coopération avec le Réseau des Tribunaux-référents
§ Preparation of the plenary meeting / préparation de la réunion plénière
§ Debriefing of the plenary meeting / Debriefing suite à la réunion plénière
5. Towards a European Observatory of judicial timeframes /
Vers un Observatoire européen des délais des procédures judiciaires
§ A quantitative approach: gathering data from a relevant sample of courts /
Une approche quantitative: collecter des données à partir d'un échantillon représentatif de tribunaux
§ A qualitative approach: examination of a draft questionnaire based on the existing Checklist
Une approche qualitative: examen d'un projet de questionnaire basé sur la Checklist existante
6. Other business / Questions diverses
ANNEXE II
List of participants / Liste des participants
Irakli ADEISHVILI, Chair of Civil Chamber of Tbilisi District Court, Tbilisi, Georgia
Jacques BÜHLER, Secrétaire Général suppléant, Tribunal fédéral suisse, LAUSANNE, SUISSE (Chair of the Group / Président du Groupe)
Jon T. JOHNSEN, Professor in Law, Faculty of law, University of Oslo, NORWAY
Giacomo OBERTO, Magistrat, Tribunal de Grande Instance, TURIN, ITALIE
John STACEY, Head of Civil and Family Procedures Branch, HM Court Service, Civil Law and Justice Division, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (Vice-Chair of the CEPEJ / Vice–Président de la CEPEJ)
Alan UZELAC, Ph.D. Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, ZAGREB, CROATIA
Jana WURSTOVA, Lawyer, Adviser, Czech Bar Association, PRAGUE 1, Czech republic
Scientific Expert / Expert scientifique
Marco FABRI, Research Institute on Judicial Systems, National Research Council, BOLOGNA, ITALY
OBSERVERS / OBSERVATEURS
EUROPEAN UNION OF RECHTSPFLEGER AND COURT CLERKS/UNION EUROPEENNE DES GREFFIERS DE JUSTICE (EUR)
Michel CRAMET, Coordonnateur, Service aministratif régional de la Cour d’Appel de Lyon, LYON, FRANCE
SECRETARIAT
Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs – Justice Division
Direction générale des droits de l’Homme et affaires juridiques (DG-HL) -
Division de la Justice
Fax: +33 3 88 41 37 43 - E-mail: [email protected]
Stéphane LEYENBERGER, Secretary of the CEPEJ / Secrétaire de la CEPEJ, Tel : +33 3 88 41 34 12, e-mail: [email protected]
Jean-Pierre GEILLER, Documentation, Tel : +33 3 88 41 22 27, e-mail : [email protected]
Annette SATTEL, Communication, Tél: +33 3 90 21 52 08, e-mail: [email protected]
Elisabeth HEURTEBISE, Assistante, Tel : +33 3 88 41 35 54, Fax : +33 3 88 41 37 45, e-mail: [email protected]
Interpreters / Interprètes
Sally BAILEY
Julia TANNER
Gillian WAKENHUT
Appendix III
EUROPEAN COMMISSION for THE EFFICIENCY OF jUSTICE
(CEPEJ)
Network of pilot courts
4th plenary meeting
Strasbourg, 10 September 2009
CONCLUSIONS
The members of the CEPEJ Network of Pilot courts met in Strasbourg for their fourth plenary meeting on 10 September 2009. They agreed on the following points regarding the operational cooperation with the CEPEJ.
THE PILOT COURTS ARE INVITED IN PARTICULAR TO
as regards the setting up of a European observatory of judicial timeframes (SATURN Centre)
§ to work as test bed for implementing specific provisions of the SATURN Guidelines on judicial time management (CEPEJ(2008)8) according to a protocol to be proposed by the SATURN Steering Group;
§ to trial within the court the models of statistics and the calculation methods and ratios (clearance rate and disposition time) proposed in the SATURN Guidelines on judicial time management, so that they can progressively become European models applicable in all European courts;
§ to organise data collection within the court so that they can fulfil the EUGMONT tables (appendix to the SATURN Guidelines), according to the legal fields on which they have jurisdiction; 2009 data should be submitted in the tables to the CEPEJ Secretariat before 30 March 2010;
as regards the quality of justice
§ to indicate to the Secretariat before 6 November 2009 any comments on the draft Handbook: Carrying out of enquiries of the court user’s satisfaction, possibly based on test on court users (CEPEJ-GT-QUAL(2009)5);
§ to organise in 2010, as a court project, a court users' satisfaction survey based on this handbook;
§ to trial within the court specific provisions of the CEPEJ’s “Checklist for promoting the quality of justice and the courts” (CEPEJ(2008)2) according to a protocol to be proposed by the CEPEJ Working group on the quality of justice (CEPEJ-GT-QUAL);
as regards the participation to the regular activities of the CEPEJ
§ to organise specific events within their court to celebrate the European Day of Justice (25 October) and to inform the Secretariat of these initiatives, to be posted on the CEPEJ Web site;
§ to participate, where appropriate, in the European Prize of innovative practices contributing to the quality of justice; "The Crystal Scales of Justice" (in civil or/and in criminal matters) or/and to encourage other courts to do so;
as regards the dissemination of the information on CEPEJ’s activities
§ to organise a regular information on the CEPEJ’s activities for the judicial and non judicial within the court, including in inviting on a regular basis the national member of the CEPEJ to visit the court;
§ to disseminate the information on the CEPEJ’s work and the documents designed by the CEPEJ among other courts in their countries;
§ to consult regularly the CEPEJ web site and to participate actively in the discussion forum;
§ to insert into the court’s web site, where appropriate, a hyperlink to the CEPEJ’s web site;
§ to indicate to the Secretariat of the CEPEJ mailing lists so that relevant information on the work of the CEPEJ can be sent directly to the stakeholders;
§ to indicate to the Secretariat of the CEPEJ any changes in the details of the court and of the court’s representatives so that the information can be properly sent by the Secretariat to the network’s members.
THE CEPEJ IS INVITED IN PARTICULAR
§ to organise the work of the pilot courts in clusters and to appoint one CEPEJ's expert per cluster entrusted to follow this work;
§ to encourage the ministries of justice in the member states to work in conjunction with the pilot courts as regards the collection of data on judicial timeframes;
§ to pursue and improve the regular dissemination of information on the CEPEJ's measures and tools, in particular through the CEPEJ's Newsletter which should be sent to all representatives of the pilot courts;
§ to urge member states to organise the translation of the relevant CEPEJ's documents into non official languages;
§ to organise CEPEJ's Guidelines so that those aimed at individual courts can be easily identified;
§ to encourage the CEPEJ’s members to meet regularly with the representatives of the pilot courts to discuss the implementation of the CEPEJ’s activity programme and to collect their comments and suggestions;
§ to simplify the use of the web site discussion forum to encourage further exchanges between pilot courts through this communication tool.