An article in the e-Gov website presents a review of the informal meeting in Dresden between the Ministers of Justice of the European Union. At their meeting Ministers have agreed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the cross-border support of the justice sector through information an communication technology (e-justice) in order to intensify cooperation in this field.
As the Federal Minister of Justice and JHA Council President, Brigitte Zypries explained “It is time now to establish the basis for using e-justice at the European level for the benefit of citizens seeking justice and of enterprises as well as in the interest of improved cooperation among judicial organs in Europe”.
But developing a justice portal as a link between different legal systems is an ambitious project because of several reasons. One of them is the fact that due to differences in legal systems in the individual Member States, according to the e-Gov article, Judges and lawyers are seldom familiar with cross-border issues, even though this would be necessary given the increasing internationalization of legal relations. Some other reasons are the linguistic diversity in Europe, and questions related to security, data protection and technical incompabilities.
Solving these questions requires national legal systems that function well and meet the special requirements established to support the justice sector. Spain, Germany, France, Belgium, the Czech Republic and Luxembourg are a good example of individual Member States´ systems, which will continue to be operated on a decentralised manner. These Members States, conduct a project to network national criminal registers. In 2006 that project commenced actual operation with the exchange of electronic data
In Bremmen from 29-31 May, presentations and panel discussions of the conference “Work on e-Justice” will focus interesting topics as cross-border communications among parties to judicial proceedings, the exchange of information between national judicial registers or the procedural model for standardisation at the European level and associated legal issues.
