Strasbourg, 20 November 2008

CEPEJ-BU(2008)3

EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR THE EFFICIENCY OF JUSTICE

(CEPEJ)

12th meeting of the Bureau - Catania, 23 October 2008 - Meeting report

Report prepared by the Secretariat

Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs


1.     The Bureau of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) held its 12th meeting in Catania on 23 October 2008, with Mr Fausto de SANTIS (Italy), President of the CEPEJ, in the chair.

2.     The following members of the Bureau were also present:

§  Mr John STACEY (United Kingdom), Vice President of the CEPEJ;

§  Ms Ivana BORZOVA (Czech Republic);

§  Ms Elsa GARCIA MALTRAS de BLAS (Spain).

3.     The agenda is appended. 

1.   Information from the President of the CEPEJ and the Secretariat

4.     The President reported on the hearing he had been given by the Group of Rapporteurs on Legal Cooperation of the Ministers' Deputies (GR-J) on 23 September 2008.  The CEPEJ activity report for 2007 had been approved. The Ministers’ Deputies had unanimously "welcomed" the report “European, judicial systems, Edition 2008”, emphasised the quality of the work, backed the methodology used and recognised its great usefulness for judicial reforms in the member States. They had stressed that it represented a fundamental contribution from the CEPEJ to the key aims of the Council of Europe concerning the rule of law. Some of the participants had also stressed that it would be useful to repeat the exercise on a regular basis so that the results could be refined and the trends in judicial systems measured.

5.     Mr de SANTIS also reported that the report would be introduced to the Italian policy makers and judicial practitioners in a specific conference to take place in Rome before the end of the year at the Court of Cassation.

2.   CEPEJ working groups

Evaluation of judicial systems

6.     The Bureau welcomed the wider media coverage of the report and agreed to invite CEPEJ’s members to play an active role in disseminating the report in their country.

7.     They agreed to recommend to the plenary meeting that a new evaluation cycle be launched in 2009 to result in a new report in 2010 based on 2008 data. The electronic questionnaire and the stability in the questions should facilitate the work of the national correspondents, although they acknowledged that the situation remained more difficult for the federal states.

8.     They agreed to support the peer review cooperation process on judicial statistics.

9.     The CEPEJ-GT-EVAL should continue its work in 2009 according to renewed terms of reference to be included into the 2009 draft activity programme.

SATURN Centre

10.  The Bureau welcomed the recommendation by the Steering Group of the SATURN Centre to encourage the 47 member states to focus in particular on four case categories (litigious divorces, dismissals, robberies and international homicides) and three main performance ratios (clearance rate, disposition time and efficiency indicator) while assessing length of judicial proceedings and case flow management. They decided to submit this recommendation to the plenary meeting of the CEPEJ.

11.  The SATURN Centre and its Steering group should continue their work in 2009 so as to become progressively a European permanent observatory of length of proceedings. Their terms of reference should be renewed within the framework of the 2009 draft activity programme.

Quality of Justice

12.  The Bureau welcomed the progress achieved by CEPEJ-GT-QUAL and supported the orientation given to the work: study on quality systems, contractualisation of judicial proceedings and satisfaction surveys aimed at justice users.

13.  The CEPEJ-GT-QUAL should continue its work in 2009 according to renewed terms of reference to be included into the 2009 draft activity programme.

3.   Other activities of the CEPEJ

Cooperation with the Pilot courts

14.  The Bureau stressed the need to improve the regular involvement of the pilot courts into the CEPEJ’s work. Clear conclusions on the input expected from the pilot courts in 2009 should come out from the 3rd plenary meeting.

15.  The Bureau stressed the preeminent role of the CEPEJ’s members in organising regular exchanges of views with their national pilot courts.

Targeted cooperation

16.  The Bureau appointed Elsa GARCIA MALTRAS de BLAS (Spain), Jean-Paul JEAN (France) and François PAYCHERE (Switzerland) to carried out the CEPEJ targeted cooperation with Bulgaria on methods for evaluating the workload of judges, prosecutors and investigators, criteria for evaluating individual judges and criteria and indicators for the classification of courts and prosecution offices. This cooperation should be initiated in January 2009.

17.  The Bureau agreed to initiated targeted cooperation with Portugal on:

§  assessment of the policies for procedural flows and fight against backlogs,

§  assessment of the policies for dematerialization of judicial proceedings and the use of IT.

Both issues would be addressed through a fact finding visit by CEPEJ appointed experts followed by a report within concrete recommendations, to be endorsed by the CEPEJ at its 13th plenary meeting in 2009.

European Day of Justice and "Crystal Scales of Justice"

18.  The Bureau welcomed the idea of to launching in 2009 a Prize: “Crystal scales of Justice” in the criminal law field, as proposed by the European Commission within the framework of the Justice Forum. However they draw the attention of the Secretariat on the need for keeping specific activities dedicated to civil law issues, which are usually less considered within the framework of European policies. The Prize could alternate between civil and criminal law issues, or both matters could be joined into a single Prize for justice in general (possibly with two branches).

Representation of the CEPEJ in other meetings

19.  John STACEY would try to attend the CCJE’s plenary meeting (12 –( 14 November 2008) for the adoption of the Opinion N° 11 on the quality of judicial decisions. This is a complementary work to the on-going work of the CEPEJ-GT-QUAL.

4.     Preparation of the 2009 activities programme

20.  The Secretariat informed the Bureau that the CEPEJ’s budget for 2009 might be slightly decreased, but proposed to try to maintain at this stage the same volume of activities in increasing efficiency gains.

21.  The Bureau proposed that the working group on execution of court decisions, which was planned “pro memoria” in the 2008 activity programme, be launched in 2009 next to the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL, CEPEJ-GT-QUAL and the SATURN Centre.

22.  Within this 2009 programme, specific emphasis should be put on the concrete dissemination of the CEPEJ’s measures, tools and documents adopted in the five last years, so as to improve the information of the policy makers and the judicial practitioners and strengthen the concrete use of this material by the stakeholders.

To that extent the Bureau stressed also the need for improving the translation of the relevant CEPEJ’s documents into non official languages: specific actions could be undertaken to encourage the ministries of justice and other relevant national bodies to organise and pay for such translations, which are vital for a proper use of the documents by individual professionals. A specific letter could be sent by the Council of Europe to the ministries of justice. The European Conference of the ministries of justice could also be used as a channel for drawing the attention of the policy makers on this necessity.

The Network of pilot courts could also be encouraged to play an active role to facilitate the dissemination of documents.

A strong campaign could be developed for enlarging the already high number of subscribers (around 2000) to the CEPEJ Newsletter, which is a good entry point to CEPEJ’s activities.

23.  The Bureau entrusted the Secretariat to revise the terms of reference of the various working groups and prepare a draft 2009 activity programme according to the discussions of this meeting (see above).

5.     Calendar of the 2009 meetings

24.  The Secretariat proposed a draft calendar of the 2009 activities, which would be posted on the CEPEJ’s web site.

6.     Preparation of the 2008 activities report

25.  This item was postponed to the next Bureau meeting.

7.     Agenda of the 12th plenary meeting of the CEPEJ

26.  The Bureau entrusted the Secretariat to propose a draft agenda for the 12th plenary session to take place on 10 – 11 December 2009.

8.     Individual complaints submitted to the CEPEJ concerning justice matters

27.  The Secretariat informed the Bureau that there were no individual complaints to be examined.


APPENDIX

AGENDA / ORDRE DU JOUR

b.    Adoption of the agenda / Adoption de l’ordre du jour

c.     Information by the Bureau members and the Secretariat / Informations des membres du Bureau et du Secrétariat

d.    CEPEJ working groups / Groupes de travail de la CEPEJ

e.     Evaluation of judicial systems / Evaluation des systèmes judiciaires          

§  Synthesis of the work in progress / Synthèse des travaux en cours

§  Appointment of the experts of the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL for 2009 / Nomination de experts du CEPEJ-GT-EVAL pour 2009

§  2009 working methodology (Revision of the Scheme, timetable for the new evaluation process, etc.) / Méthodologie de travail pour 2009 (Révision de la Grille, calendrier pour le nouveau processus d’évaluation, etc.)

§  Pilot peer review cooperation process / Processus pilote de coopération à travers une évaluation par les pairs

f.      SATURN Centre / Centre SATURN

§  Synthesis of the work in progress / Synthèse des travaux en cours

§  Appointment of the experts of the Working Group  for 2009 / Nomination de experts du Groupe de travail pour 2009

§  2009 working methodology / Méthodologie de travail pour 2009

g.    Quality of Justice / Qualité de la Justice

§  Synthesis of the work in progress / Synthèse des travaux en cours

§  Appointment of the experts of the Working Group for 2009 / Nomination de experts du Groupe de travail pour 2009

§  2009 working methodology / Méthodologie de travail pour 2009

h.    Other activities of the CEPEJ / Autres activités de la CEPEJ

a.   Cooperation with the Pilot courts / Coopération avec les tribunaux-référents

§  Invovlement of the pilot courts in the work of the CEPEJ - Conclusions of the Catania meeting / Implication des tribunaux-référents dans les travaux de la CEPEJ - Conclusions de la réunion de Catane

§  4th plenary meeting of the Network / 4ème réunion plénière du Réseau

b.   Assistance activities / Activités d'assistance

§  Organisation of the activity in Bulgaria / Organisation de l’activité en Bulgarie

§  Other requests / Autres demandes

c.   European Day of Justice and "Crystal Scales of Justice" / Journée Européenne de la Justice et "Balance de Cristal"

d.   Representation of the CEPEJ in other meetings / Représentation de la CEPEJ dans d'autres réunions

i.      Preparation of the 2009 activities programme

Préparation du programme d’activités 2009

j.      Calendar of the 2009 meetings

Calendrier des réunions de 2009

k.     Preparation of the 2008 activities report / Préparation du rapport d’activités 2008

l.      Agenda of the 12nd plenary meeting of the CEPEJ / Ordre du jour de la 12ème réunion plénière de la CEPEJ

m.   Co-operation with the European Union / Coopération avec l’Union européenne

n.    Individual complaints submitted to the CEPEJ concerning justice matters / Plaintes individuelles adressées à la CEPEJ sur des questions de justice

o.    Any oth business / Questions diverses