European e-Justice Strategy and Action Plan 2019-2023
SUMMARY OF:
2019-2023 Action Plan European e-Justice
WHAT IS THE AIM OF THE ACTION PLAN?
It sets out a list of projects and initiatives (‘actions’) to be implemented as part of the 2019-2023 European e-Justice Strategy. The Action Plan also indicates:
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the goals of individual actions and the envisaged activities;
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the participants;
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the expected contributions of the stakeholders involved (citizens, companies, legal practitioners and judicial authorities).
KEY POINTS
e-Justice
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The aim of e-justice is to improve and simplify access to information in the field of justice, as well as to support the digitalisation of cross-border judicial and extrajudicial procedures. It is not limited to one particular field of law and includes a wide variety of stakeholders.
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The European e-Justice Portal is a single, multilingual, user-friendly access point to the European e-justice system. It is the main tool developed for improving access to information in the field of justice at European level. It also includes a number of functionalities and interactive electronic services, i.e. tools to find a lawyer and a company, interactive forms supporting EU legal procedures, etc.
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European e-Justice is consistent with the general framework of eGovernment and the European Interoperability Framework and is based on:
- voluntary action;
- decentralisation;
- interoperability (i.e. the ability of information communication technology systems and of the business processes they support to exchange data and to enable the sharing of information and knowledge);
- the European dimension (in civil, criminal and administrative law).
European e-Justice achievements include:
European e-Justice Strategy
The 2019-2023 Strategy builds on the 2014-2018 Strategy and aims to further improve access to justice by continuing digitalisation in the field of justice. It is consistent with the principles and objectives of European e-Justice, and ties in with the more specific aims set out in the Action Plan. The Strategy defines 3 main areas:
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access to information;
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e-communication in the field of justice; and
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interoperability.
Access to information
The Action Plan includes projects to improve:
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general information in the field of justice — further developing the e-Justice Portal;
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access to data sets — providing data relevant for the access to justice;
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access to legal information — improving the EUR-Lex website, interlinking legal data, defining the role and applications of artificial intelligence in the field of justice.
e-Communication
The Action Plan includes projects to improve:
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secure exchange of data — developing an option for electronic payment of court fees, and the possibility to communicate online with the judicial or national authorities of the EU countries through the e-Justice Portal;
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secure communication between citizens, practitioners and judicial authorities — further developing tools for direct communication between citizens, legal practitioners, the judiciary and national authorities, for example, via cross-border videoconferencing.
Interoperability
The Action Plan includes projects to develop:
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e-CODEX — maintaining the e-CODEX system and implementing pilot projects for the exchange of forms, documents and structured data through the system;
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semantic interoperability — allowing communication between different systems by:
- aligning the terms used and using voice recognition tools to allow automatic transcription of speech;
- developing an indexing tool for EuroVoc; and
- expanding LegiVoc.
BACKGROUND
For more information, see:
MAIN DOCUMENT
2019-2023 Action Plan European e-Justice (OJ C 96, 13.3.2019, pp. 9-32)
RELATED DOCUMENTS
2019-2023 Strategy on e-Justice (OJ C 96, 13.3.2019, pp. 3-8)
Commission Decision 2014/333/EU of 5 June 2014 on the protection of personal data in the European e-Justice Portal (OJ L 167, 6.6.2014, pp. 57-60)
Council conclusions inviting the introduction of the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) and a minimum set of uniform metadata for case law (OJ C 127, 29.4.2011, pp. 1-7)
last update 12.06.2019