Strasbourg, 2 November 2011

CEPEJ-GT-EVAL(2011)4

EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR THE EFFICIENCY OF JUSTICE

(CEPEJ)

WORKING GROUP ON THE EVALUATION OF JUDICIAL SYSTEMS

(CEPEJ-GT-EVAL)

Strasbourg, 18th meeting, 20 – 21 October 2011

MEETING REPORT

Report prepared by the secretariat

Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs

1.     The Working Group on the evaluation of judicial systems (CEPEJ-GT-EVAL) of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) held its 18th meeting on 20 and 21 October 2011 in Strasbourg, with Jean-Paul JEAN (France) in the chair.

2.     The agenda appears in Appendix I and the list of participants in Appendix II to this report.

1. Information by the secretariat and expert members of the GT-EVAL

3.     The secretariat briefed the Bureau on the restructuring of the Council of Europe Secretariat: from 1 October 2011, the secretariat of the CEPEJ would be located within the Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law, Justice and Human Dignity Directorate, Justice and Legal Co-operation Department, Division for the Independence and Efficiency of Justice, Committees for Justice Unit. This Division would also include the Justice Reform Unit, responsible for targeted co-operation activities.  That should help to generate the necessary synergies between intergovernmental activities and co-operation activities.

4.     The secretariat introduced Maria ORESHKINA who had recently joined the Division as a lawyer.

5.     Georg STAWA said that, as Vice-Chair of the CEPEJ, he had had an exchange of views with the Committee of Ministers on 28 September 2011.  The CEPEJ’s 2010 activity report had been approved and several delegations had commended the CEPEJ on the innovative and creative nature of its work.

6.      Georg STAWA also reported on the Austrian lawyers conference (Anwaltstag) which he had attended on 23 September 2011 and during which the 2010 evaluation report had been presented.

7.     The Chair of the CEPEJ, John STACEY, told the Group that he had represented the CEPEJ at the General  Assembly of the European Union of Rechtspfleger in Bucharest from 14 to 18 September 2011.

8.     Beata GRUSZCZYNSKA said that the Polish Justice Ministry was very interested in the CEPEJ’s work.  With Poland due to take over the EU presidency from December 2011, she urged members of the group to attend the forthcoming special session on justice, which could include a presentation on the work of the CEPEJ.  

9.     John Stacey pointed out that the CEPEJ’s reputation now extended beyond Europe, as demonstrated by Adis HODZIC’s recent participation in the “justice in numbers” seminar held by the Supreme Court of Brazil on 29 August 2011.

2.  Use of the CEPEJ report:  work on access to the courts

10.  Béatrice LAPEROU and Virginia DONIER, researchers at the University of Besançon (France), outlined their approach to researching the subject of access to the courts:  a call for contributions had been issued in June 2010 with a view to holding a seminar; around sixty teaching and research staff specialising in law, economics and sociology, from France and elsewhere, had taken part.

11.  A research plan had been agreed around a general issue:  was access to the courts more likely to be secured if it were enshrined in the constitution?  The first part focused on the substantive aspect of access to the courts – the concrete factors that allowed effective access to the courts:  scope of enforceability (type of proceedings, determination of the competent court) and rights holders (capacity to instigate legal proceedings, class actions, cost of access to the courts, user understanding, etc.).  The second part focused on the procedural aspect:  contradictory shifts could be observed in the arrangements regarding access to the courts, towards both an easing and a tightening of access, with the same objective of facilitating the proper administration of justice (filter for managing cases, introduction of a time limit through reform of the rules on prescription, single case method, inclusion of other actors such as the ombudsman, priority issue of constitutionality, etc.); methods of bypassing the courts provided an opportunity to assess the procedures imposed by lawmakers and the routes chosen by users in order to bypass the traditional procedure (ADR, etc.)

12.  The researchers spoke of the valuable lessons to be learnt from some of the countries looked at:  Switzerland was experimenting with incorporating a right of access to the courts into its constitution, while Japan had some interesting features that were worth studying (monistic system, influence of the civil code, reform of the assize courts, etc.).

13.  Publication was scheduled for September 2012.  A 100-page summary would be distributed to members of the group.  An international symposium was due to be held in November 2012, in partnership with the French legal service training college, the Ecole nationale de la Magistrature française.  The research team could continue to operate through a network of practitioners and researchers.

14.  Jean-Paul Jean mentioned the difficulty posed by the distinction between access to the courts and access to justice.  Access to the courts could sometimes be restricted while at the same time ensuring access to justice through other channels.  He pointed out that the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteed access to justice but not access to the courts.  Explicitly articulating a right of access to the courts could in fact be a way of delimiting and hence indirectly restricting such access.

3. Implementation of the 2010 – 2012 evaluation cycle

15.  Reviewing progress in obtaining replies to the evaluation questionnaire, which were due in by 31 December, the group instructed the secretariat to send reminders to the national correspondents and CEPEJ members, drawing their attention to the need to comply with this deadline and asking them to give the CEPEJ a status report at the plenary meeting on 7 and 8 December 2011.

16.  The secretariat introduced the scientific expert, Svetlana SPOIALA (Moldova), who had been tasked with reorganising the existing database until the end of 2011.  This reorganisation, using software that would make it easier to use the information, was welcomed by the Group.

17.  Subject to the outcome of the current reorganisation, Ms SPOIALA could be appointed as scientific expert for judicial data processing in the 2010 – 2012 evaluation cycle.  

18.  The Group discussed with her its vision of the work to be carried out in the 2010 – 2012 evaluation cycle.  It asked her to pay particular attention to the most sensitive issues relating to budgets and case-flow management, and invited her to read the press review on the previous cycle, so as to identify those issues which had attracted the most comments.

19.  The secretariat said it was in the process of purchasing statistical analysis software (STATISTICA) which would make the scientific expert’s job easier.  The Group invited the expert to give a demonstration of the different options for presenting tables and graphs with this software at the plenary meeting in December, e.g. using the legal aid data from the previous evaluation exercise.

20.  Georg STAWA confirmed that the report could be published within the framework of the Council of Europe Conference of Justice Ministers in the second half of September 2012.

21.  Bearing in mind this binding date, the following timetable was drawn up:

§  January – March 2012: collection and processing of data; compilation of the main tables and graphs;

§  20 – 21 March 2012: CEPEJ-GT-EVAL meeting to discuss the quality of the most sensitive data and how to present them, based on some preliminary work by the scientific expert;

§  March – May 2012: drafting of comments by GT-EVAL members, the scientific experts and the secretariat;

§  9 May 2012: plenary meeting of national correspondents, to show them the key tables and graphs in the draft report and identify any adjustments that might need to be made to the replies in the light of these presentations;

§  10 and 11 May 2012: CEPEJ-GT-EVAL meeting to continue preparing the draft report;

§  15 June 2012: the draft report is sent to CEPEJ members for adoption at the plenary meeting;

§  5 and 6 July 2012: plenary meeting of the CEPEJ and adoption of the report (subject to possible corrections and/or additions, to be determined by the plenary);

§  Summer 2012: finalisation of the report in the light of the decisions taken at the plenary;

§  7 September 2012: the final version of the report is adopted for printing.

4. Implementation of the peer evaluation co-operation process

22.  The secretariat and Georg STAWA reported on the peer review visit to Vienna on 13 and 14 October, following the visits to Turkey and the Netherlands.  The secretariat noted the able manner in which this visit had been organised.

23.  The experts had managed to visit, inter alia, a criminal court of first instance including a joint reception facility for the court and the adjoining jail, which made for a more efficiently run service.   

24.  It was pointed out that Austria had adapted some of its internal indicators in order to bring them into line with CEPEJ standards and in particular the SATURN guidelines.

25.  Jean-Paul JEAN referred to the income derived from fees charged by the judicial system, saying that particular attention should be given to this issue in the next evaluation report.

26.  All the visits in this cycle would be dealt with in a report which would be presented at the next plenary meeting of the CEPEJ.

27.  In order to decide which countries should be included in the next round of visits, it was suggested that priority be given to those countries which had recently introduced reforms of the judicial map.

5. Co-operation with the European Union

28.  The secretariat said that the CEPEJ was in regular contact with its partners in the various EU bodies so as to ensure that they were properly informed and allow CEPEJ tools to be used by the European Union for its own purposes.

6. Information on the ongoing work of the SATURN Centre:   towards an observatory of judicial timeframes

29.  The secretariat outlined the work being carried out by the SATURN Centre’s Steering Group (see document CEPEJ-SATURN(2011)11).

30.  The quantitative approach interacted directly with the work of the GT-EVAL.  Some of the work was based on the results of the CEPEJ evaluation cycles.  The Group was anxious, however, to have a more detailed understanding of the information processed in this general context so that more use could be made of the data on case-flow management in appeal courts and supreme courts.

§  see Marco VELICOGNA’s report: CEPEJ-SATURN(2011)3, which was to be published shortly in the "CEPEJ Studies” series;

§  in the discussions in the pilot court workshops (Strasbourg, 22 September 2011) categories of cases had been suggested (in addition to the four categories used in the general evaluation exercise) in civil, criminal and administrative proceedings, which could be covered in in-depth studies, on a uniform basis, with regard to their length and case-flow management in courts; this task of defining categories, which could, in time, be regularly monitored, would continue in the coming months.

31.  The Group agreed on the need for the Chairs of the three working groups to meet with Bureau members in early 2012 to co-ordinate their work (see also para. 34 et seq. below).

32.  Beata Z GRUSZCZYNSKA spoke of the difficulty at national level of obtaining such statistics, as called for by the SATURN steering group. She also said that the dividing line between civil and administrative cases was not so clear between the different member states.  It was, however, pointed out that information should be collected at the level of individual courts, and not at national level; also, the idea was to focus not on data already available at national level but rather on the needs of the CEPEJ, which could be reasonably met by courts.  The first step was to make sure that the categories were relevant.  If the pilot courts were able to provide such statistics, the next step would be to expand the information base in order to collect, at regular intervals, information that reflected the changing situation in the country concerned.

33.  In criminal matters, the issue of multiple offences in one and the same case was once again raised:  to date, the CEPEJ had made it a rule that only the most serious offence should be counted, the aim being not to form a precise picture of the situation with regard to criminality in the country concerned but rather to have information that could be used to evaluate courts’ performance and their ability to cope with case-flows.

7. Indicators for measuring the quality of justice

34.  Georg STAWA and Adis HODZIC presented their ideas for defining CEPEJ quality of justice indicators, to complement the efficiency indicators (clearance rate and disposition time) already used by the CEPEJ.

35.  The group discussed the matter with reference to the working document CEPEJ-EVAL(2011)5Prov, which provided a summary of various elements gleaned from the experience of a number of member states.  The issue was whether or not performance/efficiency indicators should be considered from the standpoint of the quality of the system.

36.  The group agreed that the aim for the CEPEJ would be to produce a reference document listing the key indicators for measuring the efficiency and quality of a given judicial system.

37.  The experts pointed out that these elements were a matter for all the working groups of the CEPEJ and that there was a need to co-ordinate the ongoing discussions between these three groups.  It was agreed that once completed by Georg STAWA and the secretariat in the light of the present discussions, the document would be sent to members of the other two working groups (CEPEG-GT-QUAL and SATURN Centre Steering Group) for comments.

Appendix I

AGENDA / ORDRE DU JOUR

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

2.         Information by the members of the GT and the Secretariat / Information des membres du GT et du Secrétariat

3.         Exploitation of the CEPEJ's Report: work on access to the judge / Exploitation du rapport de la CEPEJ: travaux sur l'accès au juge

§  Exchange of views with the researchers, Béatrice Lapérou and Virginie Donier, University of Besançon (France) / Echange de vue avec les chercheurs, Béatrice Lapérou et Virginie Donier, Université de Besançon (France)

4.         Implementation of the 2010 – 2012 evaluation cycle / Mise en oeuvre du cycle d’évaluation 2010 - 2012

§  Implementation of the evaluation cycle / Mise en oeuvre du cycle d'évaluation

§  Exchange of views with the scientific expert, Svetlana SPOIALA / Echange de vue avec l'expert scientifique, Svetlana SPOIALA

§  Ordering of the existing data in a new data base / Stockage des données existantes dans une nouvelle base de données

5.         Implementation of the peer evaluation cooperation process /

Mise en œuvre du processus de coopération à travers une évaluation par les pairs

6.         Cooperation with the European Union / Coopération avec l'Union européenne

7.         Information on the on-going work of the SATURN Centre: towards an Observatory of judicial timeframes / Information sur les travaux en cours au sein du Centre SATURN: vers un Observatoire des délais de justice

8.         Indicators for measuring the quality of justice / Indicateurs pour mesurer la qualité de la justice

§  Analysis of the proposals by Adis HODZIC and Georg STAWA / Analyse des propositions de Adis Hozic et Georg STAWA

§  Coordination with the work of the GT-QUAL / Coordination avec les travaux du GT-QUAL

9.         Any other business / Questions diverses

Appendix II

List of participants / Liste des participants

Experts

Beata Z. GRUSZCZYŃSKA, Institute of Justice, Ministry of Justice, WARSAW, POLAND

Ramin GURBANOV, Chief of reforms division, General department of organisation and supervision,
Co-ordinator of Judicial Modernisation Project, Ministry of Justice, BAKU, AZERBAIJAN,

Adis HODZIC, Head of the Budget and Statistics Department, Secretariat High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, SARAJEVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Jean-Paul JEAN, Avocat général près la Cour d’Appel de Paris, Professeur associé à l’Université de Poitiers, Parquet Général, PARIS, FRANCE (Chairman of the group / Président du Groupe)

John STACEY, Head of International Development for Court Administration, Ministry of Justice, International Directorate, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (President of the CEPEJ / Président de la CEPEJ)

Georg STAWA, Head of Department Pr 8, Projects, Strategy and Innovation, Federal Ministry of Justice, WIEN, AUSTRIA

Frans Van der DOELEN, Programme Manager of the Department of the Justice System, Ministry of Justice, THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS - Apologized / excusé

Scientific experts / Experts scientifiques

Munira Dossaji, Principal Operational Research Analyst, Strategy and Innovation Team, Human Rights and International Directorate, Ministry of Justice, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

Svetlana SPOIALA, Consultante en analyses statistiques, MOLDOVA

European Union / Union européenne

COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION / CONSEIL DE L’UNION EUROPEENNE

Luca De Matteis, Directorate General H - Unit 2 B - Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters, BRUXELLES  Apologized / excusé

DELEGATION OF THE EU TO THE COE / DELEGATION DE L'UE AUPRES DU CdE

Antoine MATTER

Observers / Observateurs

European Union of Rechtspfleger / Union européenne des greffiers de justice et Rechtspfleger

Vivien WHYTE, Greffier au Tribunal de Grande Instance de Strasbourg, STRASBOURG, France

Other participants / Autres participants

Béatrice LAPÉROU, Chercheur, Université de Besançon, BESANÇON, France

Virginie DONIER, Chercheur, Université de Besançon, BESANÇON, France

Secretariat / Secrétariat

Directorate General - Human Rights and Rule of Law

Division for the independence and efficiency of justice /

Direction générale - Droits de l’Homme et Etat de droit

Division pour l'indépendence et l'efficacité 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]

Muriel DECOT, Co-Secretary of the CEPEJ / Co-secrétaire de la CEPEJ, Tél: +33 3 90 21 44 55, e-mail : [email protected]

Maria ORESHKINA, Principal Administrative assistant / Assistante administrative principale, Tel: +33 3 90 21 40 26, e-mail: [email protected]  

Jean-Pierre GEILLER, Documentation, Tél : +33 3 88 41 22 27, e-mail : [email protected]

Annette SATTEL, Communication, Tél : +33 3 03 88 41 39 04, e-mail : [email protected]

Elisabeth HEURTEBISE, Assistant / Assistante, Tel : +33 3 88 41 35 54, Fax : +33 3 88 41 37 43, e-mail: [email protected]

Trainee / Stagiaire

Bertille DOURTHE

Interpreters / Interprètes

Christopher TYCZKA

Nicolas GUITTONNEAU