Find an Expert : Last milestone will be accomplished on time!

Christiane Lenz

In light of the increasing number of cross-border litigation and arbitration proceedings, the need for the parties involved to be able to find the adequate expert for their particular conflict becomes more and more crucial. The risk of conflicts of interest and the technical development require the possibility to choose an expert from the widest pool possible.

Therefore, it is necessary to enable the relevant stakeholders to have access to information about expert proceedings in every EU Member State in order to develop mutual trust in expert proceedings and in particular in the quality of expert reports rendered in the context of these proceedings. The project Find an Expert led by the EEEI contributes to the achievement of these objectives.

The project started in September 2017 and will be finalized at the end of December 2019, after an extension of four months. It is financed by the European Commission (80 %) and the EEEI (20 %).

The first milestone of the project has been accomplished in spring 2018: a questionnaire regarding expert proceedings in every EU Member State has been disseminated to judges, ministries, lawyers as well as representatives of experts’ and lawyers’ associations, academic institutions and chambers of commerce in the European Union. The information which could be gathered through this questionnaire served as a basis for the main goal of the project: the online publication on the e-justice website of national lists and registers of experts as well as information sheets about civil, criminal and administrative law expert proceedings in every EU Member State.

The information collected through the questionnaire has been evaluated by the Working Groups of the project who drafted the 145 pages of information sheets about expert proceedings in the European Union. These drafts have been approved by the Scientific and Steering Committees of the project.

In order to ensure that each Member State approves the information which will be presented on the e-justice website, the representatives of the Member States at e-justice have been asked to validate the respective information sheet until the end of 2019. The information sheets will be published on the e-justice website at the beginning of 2020. The information pertaining to expert’s qualification and liability as well as to the links to lists and registers of experts will also be helpful in the context of arbitration and mediation proceedings and in the context of out of court settlements.

The Steering Committee of the project has also accomplished a first step towards a European nomenclature of fields of expertise by developing recommendations pertaining to the definition and the structure of a European nomenclature of fields of expertise which can be used as a basis for future projects of the EEEI.

The evaluation of the project demonstrates that the applied concept and method was very much appreciated by the participants in the project who indicated that they would like to participate in future projects led by the EEEI.

The EEEI wishes to thank the members of the Working Groups and all other participants in the project, in particular Juan Antonio Andino, Galina Arnadouva, Rui Batista, Carlo Bianchetti, Etienne Claes, Gilles Cuniberti, Benoit de Clerck, Sascha Dalen Gilhuijs, Béatrice Deshayes, Marian Drilea-Marga, Gerardo Herranz, Jacques Honkoop, Giovanna Ichino, Ruben Juvandes, Athanasios Kastanidis, Julie Lodomez, Nico Keijser, Jean-Raymond Lemaire, Julie Lodomez, Rafael Orellana, Luis Francisco Pascual Piñeiro, Jonathan Price, Christine Scott, Nathalie Sillon, Ernst Peter Tamminga, Verena Wirwohl, Sergey Zakharov as well as all the partners, the LRGD, the CNEJITA, lthe catalan association of judicial experts, the Compagnie des experts de Justice près de la Cour d’appel de Metz, the Portuguese and the French ministeries of Justice aand the Collège National des Experts Judiciaires de Belgique, for their support in the Find an Expert project.

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