Strasbourg, 3 July 2008
CEPEJ(2008)5
europEAN COMMISSION FOR THE EFFICIENCY OF Justice (CEPEJ)
11th plenary meeting (2-3 July 2008) - Abridged report
A. FOREWORD
The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) held its 11th plenary meeting in Strasbourg on 2 - 3 July 2008. The meeting was chaired by Mr Fausto de SANTIS (Italy).
The agenda appears in the Appendix.
B. LIST OF ITEMS DISCUSSED AND DECISIONS TAKEN BY THE CEPEJ
1. Information by the President of the CEPEJ and the Secretariat
The CEPEJ
§ took note of the information given by its President, 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 representatives of member states 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;
3. 2007 Activity Report of the CEPEJ
§ approved the 2007 Activity Report of the CEPEJ (CEPEJ(2008)1) and decided to forward it to the Committee of Ministers for approval;
4. Evaluation process of judicial systems
§ welcomed the excellent work achieved jointly by the members of the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL chaired by Mr Jean-Paul JEAN (France), the scientific-expert, Ms Marta ZIMOLAG and the Secretariat to prepare the draft report and thanked them warmly for the efforts dedicated to this exercise within a strict timeframe; it thanked the national correspondents who had coordinated the national answers to the evaluation Scheme and had fully cooperated with the experts so that they could submit a preparatory work of quality;
§ noted with satisfaction that the report includes the results of a survey carried out in 45 European states and that it was a unique exercise considering the number of fields addressed and countries concerned; it underlined that the report took place in the framework of a regular process aimed at progressively defining a core of essential quantitative and qualitative data to be collected and processed similarly in all member states;
§ adopted, in accordance both with the Action Plan of the 3rd Summit of the Heads of State and government and with its Statute, the "Report on European judicial systems – Edition 2008" (CEPEJ(2008)3), provided that:
- comments could be indicated by the delegations to the Secretariat before 15 July 2008 and that the discussions during the present meeting were taken into account;
- further comments could be drafted before the end of July 2008 by the experts of the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL, under the authority of the CEPEJ Bureau, who were instructed to do so to facilitate the reading and understanding of the statistical data; these comments would be made available to the members of the CEPEJ on the restricted web site at the beginning of August 2008;
§ decided to forward the final report as soon as possible to the Committee of Ministers so that it could take note of it;
§ decided that the Report would remain confidential until the Committee of Ministers has taken note of it and invited all its members and observers to strictly respect this rule of confidentiality so as to ensure the relevance and coherence of the publication by the Council of Europe;
§ instructed the experts of the CEPEJ-GT-EVALto prepare a synthesis of the report to facilitate its understanding and reading; this synthesis would be submitted to the members of the CEPEJ for approval through a written procedure and published together with the report;
§ instructed the Secretariat to organise the appropriate publication and dissemination of the report, including through its website, once the Committee of Ministers had taken note of it;
§ decided to publish in extenso, on its website, all the individual answers of the member states to the evaluation Scheme; therefore it invited each delegation to check that the national answers appearing on the CEPEJ website had indeed been updated and, where appropriate, to submit to the Secretariat a consolidated version of these answers before 15 September 2008; it agreed that a State which would not wish to make its data public could request it before 15 September 2008;
§ agreed to pursue the evaluation exercise within the framework of a new cycle whose timeframe would be discussed at the next plenary meeting; therefore it instructed the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL, in cooperation with the Groupe de pilotage of the SATURN Centre – as regards lengths of proceedings - tostudy the opportunity to revise some questions of the evaluation scheme andentrusted its Secretariat to adapt the electronic version of the evaluation scheme so as to take into account the comments by the national correspondents as regards the use of this tool;
§ agreed, in accordance with its medium-term activity programme, to pursue the analysis of the facts and figures presented in the report, including by opening the exploitation of the data to researchers who would wish to benefit from the scientific support of the CEPEJ, according to modalities to be defined with the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL, under the authority of the CEPEJ Bureau;
§ having due regard to the usefulness of the peer evaluation cooperation process on judicial statistics as it results from the pilot exercise with France, Poland and Bosnia and Herzegovina, instructed the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL to propose at the 12th plenary an appropriate follow up in the light of the conclusions of these visits, so as to enlarge this evaluation process and invited other member states to propose their candidature;
§ invited the member states which wish to do so to submit to the Secretariat before the end of 2008 an updating of some 2007 judicial data according to the document "Key data for justice in Europe" (CEPEJ(2007)27);
5. Judicial time management
§ took note of the work carried out by the Group de pilotage of the SATURN Centre;
6. Quality of justice
§ adopted the Checklist for the quality of justice systems and courts (CEPEJ(2008)2, decided to forward it to the Committee of Ministers, the CCJE, the CCPE and other relevant committees of the Council of Europe so that they can make good use of it and invited its members to ensure a wide dissemination of it among the relevant national institutions and organisations;
§ took note of the on-going work within the CCJE on the quality of judicial decisions which is expected to complement usefully this document, as another example of good cooperation with other committees of the Council of Europe;
§ took note of the other on-going works within the CEPEJ-GT-QUAL;
7. CEPEJ Network of Pilot Courts
§ thanked the Court of Appeal of Catania (Italy) for having invited the Network of pilot courts to held its 3rd plenary meeting on 24 October 2008 within the framework of the European Day of justice; agreed that only those pilot courts which had actively participated in the work of the CEPEJ within the last year would be invited to this meeting;
§ agreed to organise, within the framework of this Network, a specific working group on second instance issues regarding the court of appeals;
§ welcomed the proposals by Albania and Montenegro to appoint a pilot-court to represent their countries within the Network;
8. Targeted co-operation of the CEPEJ with member states
§ took note of the willingness of Bulgaria to implement the activities agreed by the CEPEJ at its 10th plenary meeting on criteria for the classification of courts and criteria for evaluating individual judges;
9. 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) and the European Committee of Legal Cooperation (CDCJ) and appreciated the good cooperation with these bodies;
10. Co-operation with the European Union
§ took note of the information given by the representatives of Slovenia and France, speaking on behalf of the outgoing and incoming presidencies of the European Union, on the recent and foreseen developments within the Union in the field of justice;
§ took note with great satisfaction of the Communication of 4 February 2008 by the European Commission setting up the Justice Forum where the CEPEJ is called to play a pre-eminent role and decided to cooperate fully with the activities of this Forum, so that the partners can benefit from the CEPEJ's works and expertise and the synergies aimed at improving the efficiency and quality of justice in Europe can be strengthened;
§ invited its members to forward to the Secretariat all the information on the celebration of the
6th European Day of Justice in October 2008;
§ noted with satisfaction that 38 candidatures had been submitted for the Crystal Scales of Justice which will be awarded in Catania on 24 October 2008; furthermore agreed that the Prize "the Crystal Scales of Justice" could now be awarded every year, one year being dedicated to initiatives in the civil law field, and one year to the initiatives in the criminal law field, alternately;
11. Observers to the CEPEJ
§ took note of the request by the European Criminal Bar Association (ECBA) to be granted the observer status with the CEPEJ and entrusted its Bureau to examine further this request and make recommendation on this issue to the 12th plenary meeting;
§ took noteof the information given by its Observers, thanked them for their concrete contribution to its activities and invitedthem to further contribute to the implementation of its programme of activities.
agenda
1. Opening of the meeting
2. Adoption of the agenda
3. Information by the President of the CEPEJ and the Secretariat
4. Recent developments in the judicial field in the Council of Europe Member states
5. 2007 Activity Report of the CEPEJ: discussion in view of its adoption
Rapporteur: Dietger GEERAERT (Belgium)
6. Evaluation of judicial systems (Work carried out by the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL)
Rapporteur: Mr Jean-Paul JEAN, Chair of the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL
i. Report on European judicial systems – Edition 2008
§ Presentation by Ms Marta ZIMOLAG, Scientific expert
§ Examination of the Report with a view to its adoption
§ Communication strategy
ii. Implementation of the pilot peer evaluation co-operation process
§ Presentation of the conclusions of the three pilot visits and discussion
iii. Intermediary process through the list of key data
7. Judicial time management(SATURN Centre)
Rapporteur: Mr Jacques BÜHLER, Chair of the Steering group
8. Quality of justice (Work carried out by the CEPEJ-GT-QUAL)
Rapporteur: Mr John STACEY (United Kingdom)
(i) Examination with a view of its adoption of the Checklist for the quality of the judiciary and the courts
(ii) State of the work carried out by the CEPEJ-GT-QUAL
9. CEPEJ Network of Pilot Courts
(i) Third meeting of the Network, Catania (Italy), 24 October 2008
(ii) Implementation of a specific network concerning appeal courts (Initiative of Italy)
Rapporteur: Mr Fausto de SANTIS (Italy)
(iii) How to improve the involvement of the Network members?
Rapporteur: Ms Elsa GARCIA MALTRAS de BLAS (Spain)
10. Targeted co-operation of the CEPEJ with Member states
11. Relations between the CEPEJ and the other bodies of the Council of Europe
§ Consultative Council of European Judges (CCJE)
§ Consultative Council of European Prosecutors (CCPE)
§ European Committee on Legal Cooperation (CDCJ)
§ Steering Committee on Human Rights (CDDH)
§ Lisbon Network
12. Co-operation with the European Union
(i) Last developments within the European Union in the judicial field
Rapporteurs: Mr Marko ŠORLI (Slovenia) and Mr Jean-Paul SUDRE (France) on behalf of the outgoing and incoming presidencies of the European Union
(ii) Involvement of the CEPEJ in the Justice Forum of the European Commission
Rapporteur: Mr Fausto de SANTIS (Italy)
(iii) Crystal Scales of Justice and European Day of Justice
13. Observers to the CEPEJ
14. Any other business