Cepej, Remedies for the excessive duration of trials, Bucarest from 3rd to 6th April 2006

Excessive duration of legal proceedings

Dear colleagues,

E.U.R. (with the chairman, Mr. Gabriele Guarda and the presence of our representative to the Council of Europe, Mr. Jean-Jacques Kuster) participated as an observer in a series of meetings between judicial professionals, organized by the Council of Europe in Bucharest from 3rd to 6th April last, to investigate the problem of the excessive duration of legal proceedings and find practical solutions to be presented to the individual Member States.

The meetings started on Monday, 3rd April, in the morning, with a Conference on “Remedies for the excessive duration of trials: a new point of view for the obligations of the Member States of the Council of Europe”, organized by the European Commission for Democracy through Law (more widely known as the Venice Commission, from the name of the city in which it usually holds its meetings), together with the Rumanian Ministry of Justice. This theme was further developed in a reserved meeting of the “Task Force on timeframes of proceedings”, created within the framework of the Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) of the Council of Europe, and interesting references were found in the “Meeting of Pilot Courts” (a judicial office for each of the Member States of the Council of Europe), that concluded the event.

From the scientific point of view, it is important to observe that CEPEJ and, in particular, the Task Force, decided to avail itself, for the implementation of its schedule of activities, of the help of some experts from the Member States, among whom is also Mr. Marco Fabri, first researcher at I.R.S.I.G. – C.N.R., the research Institute on Judicial Systems, with seat in Bologna. Mr. Fabri was indeed asked to co-operate with the task force, in order to draft a Compendium of Best Practices adopted by the “pilot courts” to improve procedure timeframes. In this way CEPEJ intends to supply the Member States of the Council of Europe with a working instrument that shall provide directions and practical suggestions to reduce and adjust the judicial timeframes.

It must be underscored, as a positive aspect, given the attention paid by European judicial systems to the excessive duration of proceedings, that for the first time the courts of the 46 Member States of the Council of Europe have been involved in the discussion of this issue.

Of course, the proceedings adopted by the 46 courts cannot really be compared to one another, also because each State appointed a judicial office that is potentially different in dimensions (staff varies from 3/5 judges to 341), territorial or competence (civil, criminal, administrative or commercial law) jurisdiction; however, the willingness shown by the various representatives (magistrates and clerks of the court) in explaining their respective operating procedures was certainly praiseworthy.

Therefore, even though, for instance, it has been reported that in the Northern Countries a civil trial with a duration exceeding one year in the first degree is already considered too long, and that for Spain the reference court is the Commercial Court of Barcelona, a newly-constituted institution which therefore has no arrears, it must be underscored that this initiative and, as a whole, the CEPEJ’s work of the last few years, is of the utmost importance; it is only thanks to this work, indeed, that the culture of the importance of “time” is consolidating its position also in judicial systems.
E.U.R.’s participation in the works has been particularly appreciated, however, it is now important that every Member State of our Association shall participate actively in CEPEJ’s projects.

The Bureau, therefore, asks you to:

• disseminate information concerning CEPEJ’s work inside every national Association;
• introduce (or ask the Ministry of Justice or the specialized Schools to introduce) the activities of CEPEJ as a study subject in the training courses for clerks of the courts/Rechtspfleger;
• translate in their respective languages the Checklist on proceedings’ schedules and make them known in courts;
• contact the “pilot court” of their respective Countries, so as to create a link with the colleagues working there and favour the implementation of the project;
• publish CEPEJ’s documents in professional or trade journals in every State;
• draft operating proposals for CEPEJ’s program for 2007;
• organize in each State a European Day of Civil Justice;
• compete, with best practices’ projects, for the “Crystal Scales” award.

Please keep the Bureau informed on your initiatives and please ALL send your comments within 31st May next

CEPEJ’s next meeting is already scheduled for 6th and 7th July 2007 in Rome. All documents on the above-mentioned activities can be found on the www.coe.int/CEPEJ  site.

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