Brussels, 17/03/2014 (Agence Europe) - Assessing the performances of the member states in matters of justice whilst taking care not to point the finger. That was the delicate task of European Commissioner for Justice and the Fundamental Rights Viviane Reding, when she presented the second EU Justice Scoreboard, the first of which was published in 2013, on Monday 17 March.
This scoreboard focuses on three aspects: the effectiveness of the legal systems (length of proceedings, clearance rate and the number of pending cases, etc.); quality (compulsory training for judges, monitoring and evaluation of court activities, budget and human resources allocated to courts and the availability of information and communication technologies (ICT) and of alternative dispute resolution methods (ADR); and finally, independence, which is measured on the citizens' perception of the independence of the justice system and the legal safeguards applicable in the event of the transfer or dismissal of a judge.
What are the key findings of this latest scoreboard? On the first of the three aspects, although the commissioner did not refer to them by name, Italy and Malta had the poorest results out of the whole EU as regards the time taken to resolve civil and commercial disputes, according to the documents published by the Commission. But they are also the two countries, just behind Luxembourg, which consequently resolve most cases at first instance. Italy is the country which experiences the greatest backlogs in cases (civil and commercial), sharing that distinction with Croatia.
On quality, the Commission notes that, in more than a third of countries, more than 50% of judges undergo ongoing training, with Estonia coming top of the table. On independence, perception of this is highest in Finland, Estonia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark. Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania (the latter two countries are still under the cooperation and verification mechanism CVM) came out bottom in this ranking.
What will the next steps be for the results of this scoreboard? The conclusions will be taken on board when preparing country-specific analyses, which will soon be carried out in the framework of the European semester. They will also feed into work on the economic adjustment programmes, the Commission states. In 2013, ten countries received a “justice” recommendation in the framework of the European semester. These included Hungary, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Poland and Slovakia. (SP)