The MEP Franco Roberti (S&D, Italy), gave an update, on Tuesday 18 February, in the European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) on the negotiations between the Parliament and the Council of the EU on the Regulation on the electronic service of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil and commercial matters - for which he is rapporteur - and on the Regulation to digitalise cooperation between the courts of the Member States in the taking of evidence (see EUROPE 12031/12).
The two texts were discussed at the same time, during a first 'trilogue' on 29 January this year. "Negotiations are progressing well", he said, although views still diverge on several issues, "but not to the point of preventing us from being able to complete the file on time".
One of the major differences concerns the EU Council's provision which allows a Member State to specify under which conditions it will accept service or the notification of judicial documents by e-mail to persons having an address in its territory (see EUROPE 12382/1), he explained.
For Mr Roberti, this would create a "variable geometry" between Member States and he hopes to find a "solution that allows the very principle of the Regulation to be respected".
In its text, the European Parliament also stated that the decentralised IT system for the electronic exchange of documents should be based on the standardised cross-border information exchange platform e-CODEX and be managed by the EU agency responsible for the operational management of large-scale IT systems, eu-LISA (see EUROPE 12193/5).
But the Commission and the EU Council, for whom the two regulations are intended to be technologically neutral, are opposed to this mention, he explained. The Parliament could consider a rewording of the text to indicate that the decentralised system should be "inspired" by e-CODEX, he added.
Another point under discussion is the language in which the service or the notification of the document will be delivered in. If the EU Council and the Commission consider it sufficient for the translation of the act to be available in one of the official languages of the Member State of the addressee, the Parliament insists that the act be drawn up in a language understood by the addressee.
Finally, the issue of deadlines for the transmission of acts and communication between the different entities involved also divides the co-legislators. In its text, the Parliament has introduced a series of deadlines for different situations, in particular for the assistance to be provided when the address of the addressee of the judicial act in another Member State is not known.
Nevertheless, the EU Council believes these deadlines are too difficult to enforce. Thus, the Parliament says it could abandon these specific deadlines and accept a more general wording.
The second 'trilogue' is scheduled to take place on 10 March. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)