Situation Overview
With a little more than three months to go before the end of the project (end of August 2019), here is an overview of the situation.
The fact sheets describing the judicial expertise procedures and the status of the experts are ready for nearly all the Member States of the European Union.
This information is being reviewed by the members of the Working Group in charge of this activity and, at the same time, by the EEEI Scientific Committee. This is essential in order to have a harmonized presentation of the data.
These texts will be sent to the European Commission at the end of May 2019 as an interim delivery.
The publication on the e-justice website is foreseen only at the end of the project, after 31 August 2019.
A final validation of these texts will be requested from the representatives of the Member States of the European Union at a meeting of the e-Justice Group to be held later in June 2019.
On this occasion, the representatives of the EEEI will also ask the representatives of the Member States to confirm the links that allow access to sites publishing national and official lists of experts in the countries where they exist.
Several national authorities have already approved the links mentioned on the information sheets.
This approach has also another objective: to make it clear to the representatives of each Member State that the quality and future of this project depends on the involvement of each Member State, as they will have to update the information and links to the experts’ lists regularly.
On this occasion, the EEEI will present the new project that will be proposed to e-justice and the European Commission, the follow-up to Find an expert, which will consist of a pilot-project for the constitution of electronic registers of experts in the Member States, with the final aim to put in place a unified European electronic register of experts. Later on, this tool will allow European judicial experts to access dematerialised exchange networks between legal professionals and practitioners in the European Union.
This project, called European Electronic Register of Experts (EERE), will require the implementation:
- of a harmonised and constantly updated nomenclature of the expert skills required to resolve disputes submitted to judges in Europe.
- of harmonised criteria for the registration of experts. This could be, inter alia, a guide to ethics and/or good behaviour involving a certain number of rights and duties and, in the first place, the necessary independence of experts towards the parties and Judges in the missions entrusted to them.
The Euroexpert association should be associated in this project.
This association is currently trying to federate the national associations of experts on a European level and EEEI supports this initiative.
Lastly, the EEEI collaborates with the CEPEJ as an observer (European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice – Council of Europe) and works in particular on the following subjects:
- a homogenous and universally accepted definition of the judicial expert;
- a statistical analysis of the place of expertise and expert in the 47 countries of the Council of Europe;
- the role of Artificial Intelligence or Predictive Justice in European judicial systems.
All these projects are part of the construction of an effective, recognised and respected judicial expertise in the European Union, while being respectful of national differences.
The content of this article represents the views of the author only and is his/her sole responsibility.
The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.
