Adoption by the CEPEJ of a Good Practice Guide on Enforcement

 

In line with the Recommendation of the Council of Europe Rec(2003)17 of 9 September 2003 and its Guidelines of 17 December 2009 on Enforcement, the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice of the Council of Europe (CEPEJ) wanted to take a new step in its work to deal with the issue of enforcement by drawing up a Good Practice Guide on Enforcement, as a complement aimed at facilitating the implementation of its Guidelines.

At the end of 2014, the CEPEJ approached the UIHJ to prepare this guide of good practice. For its part, the UIHJ proposed to the CEPEJ to entrust the works to Guillaume Payan, HDR lecturer at the University of Toulon (France), member of the CDPC-JCE (UMR CNRS 7318 DICE), UIHJ consultant, and now responsible for the Legal Unit of the UIHJ.

After a year of work and exchanges with the CEPEJ Working Group on Quality of Justice (CEPEJ-GT-QUAL), chaired by François Paychère, President of the Court of Auditors of the Canton of Geneva (Switzerland) the project was finalised. It was presented to the CEPEJ and adopted during this 26th plenary meeting. This Guide is the result of the fruitful collaboration between the CEPEJ and the UIHJ. It constitutes an additional tool for the harmonisation of the enforcement of court decisions in Europe.

The many other items on the agenda were discussed. The meeting was chaired by the CEPEJ President, Georg Stawa, with the always efficient assistance of the Secretariat of the CEPEJ, represented by its Secretary, Stéphane Leyenberger. Mathieu Chardon represented the UIHJ in his capacity as General Secretary.

The meeting began with a remarkable study session on the theme "Leading Change to Cyberjustice". The session was led by François Paychère. During his introduction, President Paychère approached all aspects of Cyberjustice including:

For François Paychère, it is necessary to always keep in mind the needs of users and to measure the impact of computerisation and of artificial intelligence in the work process to avoid merchandising the law.

These themes were developed by Harold Epineuse, scientific expert, project manager at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Justice (France). Then examples of Cyberjustice were presented by representatives from Spain, Poland and Portugal, as well as John Hunter, Head of IT of the European Court of Human Rights and by Jean-Paul Jean, President of Chamber, Director of the Documentation, Studies and Reporting Department, Head of the International Relations Department, Court of Cassation (France), Chairman of the CEPEJ Working Group on the Evaluation of Judicial Systems (CEPEJ- GT-EVAL). Based on these discussions, the GT-QUAL will continue its work toward the drafting of guidelines for late 2016, early 2017.

Jean-Paul Jean presented the work in progress of the CEPEJ for the sixth annual report on the Evaluation of Judicial Systems of the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL he chairs. The report should be published in October 2016.

Ramin Gurbanov, Member of the Bureau of the CEPEJ and the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL, Scientific expert at the Institute of Philosophy and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, Judge in Baku (Azerbaijan) introduced the CEPEJ study No. 22 on "A Quality Justice for All Member States of the Council of Europe" he wrote together with Jean-Paul Jean, in collaboration with Jacques Bühler, President of the Saturn Center of the Steering committee for Judicial Time Management (CEPEJ SATURN), Deputy Secretary General of the Federal Court of Lucerne (Switzerland), and François Paychère. This book traces the history of the CEPEJ since its creation in 2002 and its achievements. Link to this document.

Among other topics, Clementina Barbaro, Administrator at the CEPEJ, presented a brochure on the methodology for the implementation of the CEPEJ cooperation programs. Records of accounts of work programmes with several countries (Albania, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Croatia, Turkey, Kosovo, Morocco, Jordan, and Tunisia) were also presented.

Link to the CEPEJ abridged report of the meeting.