Though the European legal space is advancing slowly, it does so assuredly with the help of new technologies. The e-justice project, presented by the European Commission on 30 May, will certainly contribute to this modernisation of European justice, and, as a result, will improve citizens’ access to justice. “It is not only a matter of new technologies,” stressed French Justice Minister Rachida Dati, whose country currently holds the EU Presidency, “but of a justice that can be explained, which can be read though the interconnection of criminal records and the possibility for citizens to access judges and legal aid”.

E-JUSTICE

The method, however, is not completely new. The EU already has portals on Community law (Eur-Lex or N-Lex), case law portals, such as the one for the presidents of the supreme judicial courts ( www.network-presidents.eu), or the European Judicial Network in civil and commercial matters ( ec.europa.eu/civiljustice).

But the e-justice initiative must go further: the creation, in 2009, of a European portal linking all the existing sites, a permanent aid for translation and interpretation in procedures, particularly criminal, the interconnection of company registers, and, in particular, criminal records. Thirteen member states have already committed to this networking of criminal records accessible to judges and law enforcement services from throughout the EU. And among these pioneers, six countries (Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, the Czech Republic and Luxembourg) are already connected.

In parallel, the Commission proposed to the Council creating a European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS). Its objective is to encourage member states to exchange information through joint interconnection software and automatic translation mechanisms. Because, in this field, everything needs to be done, “as national jurisdictions often hand down punishments solely on the basis of the sentencing record produced by the member state,” stresses the Commission. The securised infrastructure will be European, but the criminal records forming it will be exclusively held in databases managed by member states.

The EU has significant progress to make in terms of civil law. According to a Eurobarometer published in April 2008, only 17% of Europeans judged the access to civil justice in another member state to be easy, such procedures only involving 2% of them. The reasons? The lack of information on the rules which are applied, but also linguistic problems, the cost, and more generally the lack of confidence in the procedure’s outcome. However, according to this European survey, 74% ask for measures to help them exercise European law.