During its 37th plenary meeting held in Strasbourg on 8 and 9 December, the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) launched the 2022-2025 action plan called “Digitalisation for a better justice” aiming at reconciling the efficiency of new technologies and the respect of fundamental rights. Back on this plan which will also focus on the use of artificial intelligence technologies.

The priority of the CEPEJ for the next four years is thus to accompany the States and the courts in a successful transition towards the digitalization of justice in conformity with the European standards. This action plan fixes the great orientations of the CEPEJ, with the user at the centre of its concerns, even in a digitised environment or in the course of digitisation, by placing at his disposal an effective and quality public service of justice.

The orientations of the CEPEJ for 2022-2025

These orientations are articulated around major axes aiming at“that justice is always transparent, collaborative, human, centred on individuals and accessible, enlightened, and finally responsible and reactive” and are the following:

• Efficiency and quality of justice: support the digitalisation of the administration and management of the courts and public prosecutors’ offices. Information technologies should optimise the functioning of justice and the interconnections between the various judicial institutions. The tools chosen by the States and the courts must be the most suitable and compatible with a quality, efficient, accessible and impartial justice. The digitisation of procedures must improve their efficiency, but also the quality of the work to be done by judges, prosecutors, the teams that assist them and lawyers.
• Transparency of justice: promote digitisation to improve knowledge of justice in general and, in particular, of the length of proceedings.
  New technologies must provide users with better knowledge of procedures, legal institutions and the respective roles of each of the professionals involved in the justice system. Each court must have dashboards enabling it to monitor and manage its flow of cases and the workload of legal professionals.
• Collaborative justice: implement relevant digital tools for interconnection between participants in judicial proceedings (judges, prosecutors, lawyers, other justice professionals, users).
• Human justice: supporting judges, prosecutors, their teams and other justice professionals in an appropriate way, in order to adapt their essential role also to the digital environment. The judge must remain at the centre of the procedure.
• People-centred and accessible justice: supporting professionals and users of justice with training in digital tools, which is vital because it contributes not only to the efficiency of justice but also to its independence.
• Informed justice: increase the use of the results of the CEPEJ’s evaluation of judicial systems and other tools.
• Responsible and responsive CEPEJ: ensuring the visibility of its tools so that they are accessible to all and reflect the expertise of those who developed them. The CEPEJ is at the service of professionals and users of justice, who can ask it to create specific and tailor-made tools for a better justice.

Proposed improvements to the CEPEJ’s methodology

• Give more importance to networking and exchange of good practices
• Ensure better internal coordination within the Council of Europe: the Council of Europe’s Department for the
  execution of judgments of the ECHR, and the ECHR which could use the CEPEJ indicators while providing the
  CEPEJ while providing the CEPEJ with useful information on dysfunctions within the judicial systems of member states, the CAHAI for questions on
  intelligence, the CDCJ and the CDPC for a coordination on the respective tools concerning the
  tools in the field of justice, etc.
• Ensuring synergies between the intergovernmental activities of the CEPEJ and the cooperation activities of the CEPEJ, as well as between

The CEPEJ has also adopted a revised roadmap aiming at ensuring an appropriate follow-up of the CEPEJ European Ethical Charter adopted in 2018 on the use of artificial intelligence in judicial systems and their environment which has as its axes:

• respect for fundamental rights in the design and use of AI tools
• non-discrimination,
• data quality and security,
• transparency, impartiality and fairness,
• user control.

The charter emphasises the need for specific training and indicates that developers and users of AI applications could find it beneficial to receive more practical guidance on how to apply the five principles set out in the CEPEJ Charter.

This would give developers a clearer idea of how to audit their applications, ideally already in the development phase. Operationalisation, which could take the form of guidelines or checklists per category of programmes, could also be used by an external certifier/auditor.

This operationalisation work has already started with regard to decision modelling. It should be extended and lead to a concrete tool for evaluating the CEPEJ Charter, which could be used independently by third parties. After a precise application of this evaluation tool and a publication of its documentation, the programme could receive a label indicating conformity with the CEPEJ Charter.

Finally, the CEPEJ adopted guidelines on the digitisation of judicial files and the digitalisation of courts, the revised SATURN guidelines for the management of judicial time and its activity programme for 2022 and 2023.

Translated from La CEPEJ présente son plan d’action 2022-2025 sur la digitalisation pour une meilleure justice pour 202