Strasbourg, 18/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - At a meeting reviewing ways of reducing the length of civil procedures, sponsored by the Council of Europe in Madrid from 11 to 13 July and inspired by the principle "delaying justice is a denial of justice", the representatives of 28 States agreed that unreasonably long procedures undermine public confidence in the judicial system. Participants identified guidelines for making courts more effective in their work: - in the area of prevention, authorities should use mediation to a greater extent and other dispute settlement alternatives (extra-judicial dispute settlement is less costly and, above all, reduces the number of cases the courts have to handle); - in case management, there is a need to try to limit cases to one set of proceedings; - as for the work of judges themselves, "models of judgments are needed for specific types of cases" to help them prepare judgments. Further, a "mobile squad" (a group of substitute judges) should help solve the problem of the shortage of judges in some courts and a sufficiently large number of judicial assistants should carry out non-judicial tasks.
Participants also discussed the establishment of a European Commission for Justice which, in the States so desiring, could improve the efficacy of justice and, in particular, use comparable judicial statistics to propose specific measures for reducing the duration of civil procedures.