The UIHJ takes part in a new European project on Cross-Border Enforcement of Judgments

Once again, the expertise of the UIHJ was requested as part of a main European project funded by the European Union.

The objective of the project is to develop an online cross-border enforcement proceeding tool for EU citizens, businesses and judicial officers, enabling to start an enforcement process; to archive and send relevant documents and data electronically to other EU member states. The tool is complemented by a multilingual user interface to ensure access to cross-border justice for EU citizens and businesses. As a result, EU citizens will be able to initiate enforcement proceedings, check up on the performance of the judicial officer and the current status of the proceeding.

The proceeding tool will make the work of EU judicial officers more efficient due to interconnections with information registers (police information system, e-file, courts information systems, commercial register, population register, motor vehicle registration centre register) and fully electronic data exchange throughout the entire proceeding.

The online cross-border enforcement proceeding tool will be implemented in Estonia during the pilot project, with a view of extending the geographical scope in follow-up projects. As an input to the development of the online cross-border enforcement proceeding tool, a study of European legislation and existing national enforcement tools will be carried out. The study will identify best practices to be integrated with the new tool, as well as potential legal obstacles to deployment. The study will result in a set of recommendations to European policy-makers on making cross-border enforcement more efficient.

The consortium formed by the Ministry of justice of Estonia, the National Chambers of Judicial Officers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and the UIHJ is set up to successfully achieve the project results. The Ministry of Justice will initiate the removal of legislative obstacles in Estonia to implement the online cross-border proceedings tool, should any be identified.

This project shall run for 24 months from 4 February 2013. Its total budget is 1,438,442 euros, 80% of which is financed by the European Commission. Here is a new opportunity for the European judicial officers to improve the profession under the auspices of the UIHJ and participate in the implementation of the European judicial area for the benefit of citizens and businesses.