Strasbourg, 22 November 2022

CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST(2022)9

EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR THE EFFICIENCY OF JUSTICE

(CEPEJ)

Working Group on Cyberjustice and Artificial Intelligence

(CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST)

7^th meeting (13-14 October 2022)

Meeting report

Report prepared by the Secretariat

Directorate General I - Human Rights and the Rule of Law

1.      Introduction

1.            The Working Group on Cyberjustice and Artificial Intelligence (CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST) of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) held its 7th meeting on 13-14 October 2022, at the Council of Europe premises in Strasbourg. Individual sessions could be accessed online by experts and observers upon request. The agenda is attached as Appendix I to this report.

2.      Work of the Advisory board on artificial intelligence (AIAB)

2.            The President of the Working Group announced that the creation of the AIAB was endorsed by the CEPEJ at its 38^th Plenary meeting in Valetta on 27-28 June 2022. The CEPEJ welcomed the additional guidance on the use of AI in the judicial environment and the monitoring of emerging cyberjustice and AI systems in Europe.

3.            A first meeting with the AIAB and Presidents of both the CEPEJ-GT-QUAL and CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST was held online on 12 September 2022. Matthieu Quiniou (France) was appointed coordinator to act as the main contact point for the Secretariat and to regularly report on the board’s activities to the Working groups at their biannual meetings.

4.            The coordinator presented the main topics discussed during the 1^st AIAB meeting: the finalisation of the categories for the “Resource Centre on Cyberjustice and Artificial Intelligence” (hereafter “ReC”) and the criteria for AI systems to be entered, as well as the next steps towards the operationalisation of the CEPEJ “European Ethical Charter on the use of artificial intelligence in judicial systems and their environment” (CEPEJ(2021)16 - hereafter, the “Ethical Charter”). The AIAB was asked to provide guidance for the realisation of these tasks.

5.            The Working Group recommended that the ReC should “go live” as quickly as possible. The initial period should be considered as a testing phase, allowing for the fine tuning of issues that cannot be fully resolved in theory but only in the context of practical application, e.g. the selectiveness of categories or selection of relevant AI systems.

6.            Pedro Almeida (Portugal) informed the Working Group about the recent developments in the Council of Europe Committee for Artificial Intelligence (CAI), which held its 2nd meeting on 21-23 September 2022, during which a Zero Draft Convention on Artificial Intelligence (on which the CEPEJ Secretariat provided comments) was presented^[1]. Of note at this stage is the proposal for a compulsory risk and impact assessment of artificial intelligence systems and the related draft methodology (HUDERIA) currently under development. The methodology would have relevance for the currently ongoing operationalisation of the CEPEJ Ethical Charter.

7.            The Working group acknowledged the complementarity and compatibility of the ReC’s aim of scrutinising and better understanding specific AI systems applied in the judiciary with the AI regulation efforts of the CAI and the EU. Pedro Almeida (Portugal) and Gregor Strojin (Slovenia) will continue to liaison on related matters between the Working Group and the CAI and EU.

3.      Revision of the CEPEJ ICT-Index

8.            Regarding the reflection on indicators to measure progress towards cyberjustice, the CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST discussed the draft proposal for a revised ICT-index questionnaire and explanatory note, initially developed and regularly implemented by CEPEJ-GT-EVAL. The proposal of revision aims at streamlining the questionnaire to allow for better insights into the implementation of relevant guidelines in this area, such as the “Guidelines on electronic court filing (e-filing) and digitalisation of courts” (CEPEJ(2021)15). Another key recommendation would be to introduce the measurement of the actual usage of new technology in the judiciary, in addition to the already measured deployment.

9.            The draft proposal was prepared by Alexandra Tsvetkova (Bulgaria), Giulio Borsari (Italy) and Marco Velicogna (Italy), the latter being a longstanding expert for CEPEJ-GT-EVAL. The proposal was presented and discussed previously, during an online seminar of the European Cyberjustice Network on 2 September 2022, to gather additional input from the relevant community of practitioners.

10.           The proposal for the revision will be presented to the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL, to decide on its inclusion in the evaluation scheme of the next biennial cycle.

4.      European Cyberjustice Network (ECN)

11.          The Working Group prepared the forthcoming 2^nd annual meeting of the ECN on 21 October 2022, dedicated to e-filing and the digitisation of judicial procedures. 

12.          Based on the Secretariat’s summary of the ECN 2022 activities, the group members started a reflection on the future development of the network. One key proposal was to more strongly engage the ECN in the dissemination of tools developed by the CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST and to start making use of the Network to systematically collect information, a necessity to develop relevant tools.

13.          The Working Group decided to adopt a more forward planning approach by scheduling the annual meeting and three seminars already this year for 2023. Additional events could be realised in a timely manner on demand. The exact topics should be consulted with the ECN members based on their emerging needs. Rimantas Simaitis was appointed to lead the development of the ECN with a view to future activities.

5.      Comparative Study on the development of judicial E-auctions

14.          The Working group discussed the draft comparative study and guidelines on judicial e-auctions prepared and presented by Massimiliano Blasone (Italy) and Dovile Satkauskiene (Lithuania). The experts conducted a thorough mapping and analysis on the use of judicial e-auctions in 46 member States and identified good practices. In addition, the guidelines provide practical instructions for setting up and maintaining judicial e-auction platforms.

15.          As the work is already quite substantially advanced, a previously planned additional survey and focus group was discarded. Instead, efforts would be concentrated now on the presentation of finalised guidelines at the first CEPEJ plenary meeting next year with a view of their adoption.

16.          The Working Group members recognised the accuracy, comprehensiveness and high pace of the experts’ work, expecting a revised draft taking into consideration the feedback of the Working Group members before the end of the year.

6.      Joint meeting with the CEPEJ Pilot Courts Network on judicial e-auctions

17.          The draft comparative study and guidelines on judicial e-auctions were presented to the members of the Pilot Court Network to gather relevant feedback and identify potential additional needs that should be addressed.

18.          The present pilot court members confirmed the usefulness of guidelines on judicial auctions, as most of them have either introduced these systems recently or are considering doing so in the near future.

19.          One point raised during the discussion was the apparent lack of legislation concerning the treatment of digital assets, which could become a topic of interest for future tools developed by the CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST.

7.      Joint meeting of CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST and CEPEJ-GT- SATURN

20.          The joint meeting provided the opportunity for mutual exchange on potential areas of cooperation by the two working groups. Giacomo Oberto, President of the CEPEJ-GT-SATURN, presented tools under development to which a contribution by the CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST could bring added value, in particular the draft revised time management checklist, a potential contribution to a compendium of good practices on judicial time management, the update of the handbook on court dashboards adopted in 2021 with a more developed section on information technology requirements, as well as on a potential update of the Recommendations CM/Rec(86)12 concerning measures to prevent and reduce the excessive workload in the courts.

21.          The working groups praised this continuous exchange in a friendly and constructive manner and decided, for these tools to continue this fruitful cooperation by written procedure.

8.      Public jurisprudence databases (use of metadata and anonymisation)

22.          Monica Palmirani (Italy) presented the status of the comparative Study on public jurisprudence databases. Focus was laid on a questionnaire which should be answered by the ECN members, to map the situation in the CoE member States and to find the points of common interest for the guidelines.

23.          Furthermore, it was proposed to better reflect the realities in different member States in the title of the Guidelines and change them to: “Guidelines on public court decisions and legal knowledge access.”

24.          The Working Group members urged the experts to simplify and shorten the questionnaire, and not to rely exclusively on it as there is a high risk of a low response rate. In addition, the identification and use of existing relevant secondary data should be considered (including the biennial CEPEJ evaluation), which could also lead to a reduction of the length of the current questionnaire.

25.          The Working Group members reconfirmed the importance of advancing the guidelines, as the publication of court decisions is on the agenda of most member States.

9.      Online ADR with focus on online mediation in penal matters

26.          Related to the work on online Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), the Secretariat recalled that two reports are being developed: (1) on the use of online mediation in criminal matters, and (2) on the benefits of online ADR for vulnerable persons. Federica Casarosa (Italy) was recently appointed to work on the latter. Both reports should lead to better insights into if and how to proceed with the aforementioned guidelines.

27.          Mar Hermosilla (Spain) presented the draft report on online mediation in penal matters, researching the conditions and evidence for its most appropriate application in the member States and the relation to criminal proceedings.  

28.          The Working Group decided that a taskforce should be created with Ruslan Mirzayev (Azerbaijan) and Rimantas Simaitis (Lithuania) to provide further guidance to the experts.

10.  Any other business

29.          The next working group meeting was scheduled for 13/14 April 2023.

APPENDIX 1

                                                                                            

CEPEJ-CYBERJUST-OJ(2022)3rev

EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR THE EFFICIENCY OF JUSTICE

(CEPEJ)

7^th meeting of the Working Group on Cyberjustice and Artificial Intelligence

(CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST)

13-14 October 2022

Strasbourg, France

AGENDA

APPENDIX 2

List of PArticipants

GT-Cyberjust meeting

MEMBERS / MEMBRES

Pedro ALMEIDA, Legal Adviser, European Affairs Coordination Unit, Directorate-General for Justice Policy, Ministry of Justice, Lisbon, PORTUGAL

Maria Giuliana CIVININI, Judge, member of the Italian Judiciary, President of the Tribunal of Pisa, Pisa, ITALY,

Rimantas SIMAITIS, Associate Professor at Vilnius University, Partner at Cobalt law firm, Attorney-at-Law, Arbitrator, Mediator, Vilnius, LITHUANIA

Gregor STROJIN, Advisor to the President, Supreme Court of the Republic of Slovenia, Ljubljana, SLOVENIA

Martin SCHNEIDER, Counsellor in the Austrian Federal Ministry of Justice, AUSTRIA

Camille LE DOUARON, Chargée de mission data, Ministère de la Justice, FRANCE

***

SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS / EXPERTS SCIENTIFIQUES

Tomasz KISIELEWICZ, Expert / Coordinator, Modern technologies aspects for justice, Ministry of Justice, POLAND

Ruslan MIRZAYEV, Head of Education and Training (Dispute Resolution) at the International Chamber of Commerce, AZERBAIJAN

Bojan MURSEC, Present Director, Centre of Information Technology, Supreme Court, SLOVENI

***

OBSERVERS / OBSERVATEURS

EUROPEAN UNION OF RECHTSPFLEGER AND COURT CLERKS / UNION EUROPEENNE DES GREFFIERS DE JUSTICE (EUR) – Jos Uitdehaag, First Vice President, the NETHERLANDS

EUROPEAN EXPERTISE AND EUROPEAN INSTITUTE (EEEI) / INSTITUT EUROPEEN DE L’EXPERTISE ET DE L’EXPERT (EEEI) - Robert RANQUET, Vice President, France (online)

Council of Europe, European Committee on legal cooperation - Sophio Gelashvili, Co-Secretary (online)

***

SECRETARIAT

DGI - Human Rights and Rule of Law

DGI - Droits de l’Homme et Etat de droit

E-mail: [email protected]

Daniel SCHMIDT, Secretary of the Group CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST / Secrétaire du groupe CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST, e-mail : [email protected]

Paul MEYER, Co-secretary of the Group CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST / Co-secrétaire du groupe CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST, e-mail : [email protected] (online)