Title: The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice and evaluation of legal systems Council of Eur
1The European Commission for the Efficiency of
Justice and evaluation of legal systems (Council
of Europe)
Dr. Pim Albers Ministry of Justice of the Netherl
ands (bureau) member of the CEPEJ and chair Of C
EPEJ-GT-EVAL
2What is the Council of Europe?
- It is the oldest political intergovernmental
organisation (founded in 1949)
- 46 Member States in Europe
- Observer States (US, Canada, Japan, Mexico and
Holy See)
3Aims of the Council of Europe
- The Council was set up to
- defend human rights, parliamentary democracy
and the rule of law, develop continent-wide
agreements to standardise member countries'
social and legal practices, promote awareness
of a European identity based on shared values and
cutting across different cultures.
4Promoting rule of law and efficiency of justice
- European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)
- 20th Ministers of Justice Conference (Budapest)
promoting access to justice, stimulation of ADR,
simplification of court documents, efficient
system of legal aid - 23th Ministers of Justice Conference (London)
measures to promote the efficiency of justice and
improving the functioning of the courts
5Expert Committee on Efficiency of Justice (CJ-EJ)
- Main tasks
- To elaborate a mechanism to enable States to
examine the results achieved by different legal
systems in the light of those principles by using
amongst other things, common statistical criteria
and means of evaluation
6European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice
(CEPEJ 2002)
- Examine results achieved by different legal
systems using statistics and means of
evaluation
- Identify problems and areas of improvement in the
area of legal systems
- Country assistance
- Suggestions from drafting new legal instruments
of modification of current ones
7Results of this Commission
- Formulation of recommendations in the justice
area
- Country assistance of Malta and Switserland
(Mediation), Croatia and Slovenia (Delays in
court proceedings), Netherlands (Territorial
jurisdiction of courts) - Conferences (improving human rights (April The
Hague 2004), The ideal civil trial (Brussels
2004) and evaluating European judicial systems
(The Hague 2005) - Report European Judicial systems 2002
- Framework programme towards an optimum and
foreseeable timeframes
8WWW.COE.INT/CEPEJ
9Evaluation of legal systems (pilot scheme)
- Working party CEPEJ-GT1 (8 experts France,
Netherlands, Poland, UK, Portugal, Italy,
Romania, Croatia) and the World Bank (Observer)
- Starting point paper evaluating judicial
systems a balance between variety and
generalisation (2003)
- Development of the draft pilot-scheme (108
questions)
- Test-round in 2003 with the countries
participating at CEPEJ-GT1
- Spring 2004 sending questionnaires to the Member
States
- Adoption of the final report in December 2004
- Conference and presentation of the report in May
2005 The Hague
10Usability of the report for policymaking
- Three examples
- Number and size of first instance courts
- Length of court proceedings (at the level of the
appeal courts)
- Disciplinary proceedings and sanctions against
judges
11Future ambitions of the CEPEJ
- Improvement of the questionnaire
- Planning of a new evaluation round at the end of
2005
- New plans for country assistance
- Presentation results of the taskforce
CEPEJ-TF-DEL (European network of pilot courts)