Minutes by Sascha Dalen Gilhuijs and Julie Lodomez

The kick off meeting of the new joint EEEI/EuroExpert project FinExII on the 19th of April was a success in every way.

Welcome by the Institut des Réviseurs d’Entreprise

The meeting was hosted by the Institut des Réviseurs d’Entreprises and opened by their Vice president Fernand Maillard who gave an interesting speech on the work of the Institute.

Project presentation

Soon after, the more than 50 participants, both live and via video, were skilfully led through the objectives of the project and the important task for which the partners see themselves. Key representatives of the project such as Beatrice Deshayes, Bernhard Floter and Jean-Raymond Lemaire of both the leading partners EEEI and EuroExpert gave insight into the work that is to be done.

The focus is working towards comparable lists of experts throughout Europe with basic common notions on quality of experts and a common nomenclature of the different types of expertise. The countries that we will work with (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, and Romania) were introduced.

Lists of experts in Europe

Most European countries have a publicly available list of experts, but the requirements vary.

This is what emerges from the output of the study “Find an Expert I” led by the European Expertise and Expert Institute (EEEI), which was presented by Mr. Bernhard Floter.

The study, which examined the various European standards in the field of judicial expertise, highlights that 22 European countries have lists of experts and the majority of these lists are publicly available.

Experts are generally registered by regional courts or by the Ministry of Justice, either for an indefinite period or for a period ranging from 1 to 6 years.

While there is some discrepancy on the minimum experience required as an expert outside the judicial sector (12 countries have no criteria and the others requires 3 to more than 5 years) and on the continuing education required in order to remain on the list, all European countries agree on the following criteria:

  • the expert must have an academic or professional background,
  • he must have practical experience after obtaining his certification,
  • he must have a clean criminal record.

These interesting results will serve as a basis of reflection for the continuation of the project aiming, at the European level, at a common understanding of the notion of expertise, at the convergence of nomenclatures as well as at the realization of a computerized expert search tool.

Procedures and budget

The procedures, budget but also the context from which we start the project and the basis that was laid with FinEx was presented. Also, the big event of the project where all will come together, the Conference of Consensus, was explained in detail.

At work

After the lunch break, the participants were put to work in the Work packages that they had chosen to participate in. There were concrete tasks to be distributed and defined, and action was planned to make this project a big success.

We achieved a lot in just one day: we got to know the people with whom we will work closely in the coming two years, we got the essence of the work to be done and made some very essential first practical decisions and most importantly: we were energized by the leaders of the project and the Work packages who will play an important role to keep the project on track and help us reach the goals.

Participants presentation
Presentation