Our web site includes much information on our 19th congress and it seems superfluous to add anything here.

However, if a point remains to be discussed, it is the one concerning the perspectives that the post-Washington area has to offer to us.

But above all we would like to acknowledge the massive presence in the American capital of the representatives of the African continent. Remarkable actors during the working sessions    and champions of the cause of a trade, ours, that many still regard as having to remain attached with the only activities of the service of documents and the enforcement of court decisions, they have astonished us by their perspicacity and their progressive analysis.

Another lesson: the powerful upcoming of the judicial officers with a liberal statute of the Central and Eastern Europe, who were present in many commissions, contrasting in that with the collapse of our Austrian and Italian colleagues officially absent from our debates, showing thus how much, apart from some rare cases, the rupture appear inescapable between judicial officers and civil servants enforcement agents.

Lastly, another positive aspect: the beginning of promising initiatives on the American territory, initially through the contacts established with the World Bank thanks to the French intervention, and then with the bringing together towards various institutions having vocation to mix with our corporation.

The congress - that is its role - traced the program which will guide the action of the new board for the following years

Any prospective step will have to ensure to integrate, on the one hand, the substantial changes which are profiled within our profession and, on the other hand, to pre-empt the evolution of the legal principles which controls them, and which remain subjected to the strong impregnation of globalization.

Being the legal concepts, no one could dispute that the great romano-Germanic civil law principles, which since the 19th century controlled most of planet, grew blurred to the profit of a much Anglo-Saxon inspired law which favours the emergence of anything of contractual nature.

Obviously, today, the attempts or projects of adjusting universal legal structures are articulated around a triple mechanism aiming at founding:

- a powerful law drawing its substance in the concept of contract
- a legal system articulated around an alternative mode of settlement of litigations, by privileging arbitration
- an arsenal of devices in favour of harmonised enforcement measures.

One must oust from this architecture the idea of a substantial law which would be dominated by contractual values, in which conflicts would be regulated by the use of arbitration and the sanction applied in contemplation of instruments relating to a harmonised law of enforcement.

On this last point, which is the object of a particular concern to us as judicial officers, it is easy to measure how much the progress is constant, in spite of a chaotic course.

The works of the congress proved it at the time of the summary proposals by resuming the study of Ali-Unidroit on the “principles of trans-national civil procedure”,

The strong sensitivity shown by the congressmen on the topics relating to the development of our activities proved the importance of the economic stakes and the concerns which they cause.

The myth of the judicial officer related to the reducing role of an enforcement agent only in charge of enforcing court decision and the service of document is over. Moreover each one could realise the decline of these two poles of activity.

The time has come for us to promote our multidisciplinary mission. Everywhere the judicial officer outlines a new profile. In Europe, but also in Africa - even on the American continent and in Thailand - the judicial officer will be a highly qualified lawyer, working as a liberal professional, independent and responsible. Recognised like a vector of legal safety, regarded as an economic chain link, participating in the fight against corruption and associated as an essential element of the rule of law, the judicial officer soon organised in networks, will constitute a major reference in the implementation of any national or international legal system.

It is regrettable that some State governments - particularly of Europe - still recluse in their national sovereignty, badly informed and more concerned with the past than with the future, think, under fallacious purposes, to maintain a body of judicial officer voluntarily weakened and which competence is limited to the only ends to ensure a legal and political control from another age, even if it means to harm the correct functioning of their own public service of justice! Worse... It is incredible that such leaders can still offer a similar posture in the international enclosures by perceiving favourable echoes.

The board of the UIHJ established a 12 points action plan, each point focusing on the promotion of a judicial officer embracing new prerogatives and duties that will enlarge his activities in various areas such as legal advice, debt collection, the plenitude of enforcement measures, as well as other related functions such as the legalization of private agreements, the sequestrations of goods, post legal mediation, etc

The consultations are launched and each concerned judicial officer will be able to join to the discussions.

Our last editorial already preceded this movement.

From now on the work is in progress.

To be followed...

Jacques Isnard
President of the UIHJ