Month: February 2019

e-Justice paradigm under the new Council’s 2019-2023 Action Plan and Strategy – some notes on effective judicial protection and judicial integration

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by Joana Covelo de Abreu, Editor

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Information and Communication technology (ICT) and digital tools are shaping the way new solutions are being implemented in EU Procedure and justice, in all European Union. In fact, through the Digital Single Market (DSM) political goal, new technological and digital approaches have been adopted and are now being widespread.

Under DSM’s strategy, e-Justice appeared as a paradigm to be settled using a method: the one of interoperability. But this method was also acknowledged by the 2016 e-Government Action Plan as a general principle of EU law: in fact, alongside elder ones such as transparency or efficiency others were settled, truly built on this new digital approach it is being aimed to be accomplished: the one of interoperability by default, the one of digital by default and the once-only principle. In fact, first approaches to stakeholders revealed the importance of the latter since, in an EU settled and developed around fundamental freedoms, economic agents were able to raise awareness among stakeholders of the need to overcome administrative barriers to similar proceedings in different Member States or before the European institutions. In fact, they were able to devise that they had to provide, for as many times as they initiated a proceeding, the same information and documents, when, in fact, the proceeding was similar, the petition was the same… That determined the emergence of the once-only principle, based on the need of reusing data across the EU. However, to do so stakeholders also understood those public services had to work through interconnected databases and operative systems – otherwise, the reuse of data would come difficult and the once-only principle would never get out of the table of intended measures. That was the perfect setting to bet on digital components, considering the first services to start this digitalisation update were public services.
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Trends shaping AI in business and main changes in the legal landscape

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by Ana Landeta, Director of the R+D+i Inst. at UDIMA
and Felipe Debasa, Director of the ONSSTKT21stC at URJC

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Without a doubt and under the European Union policy context, “Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an area of strategic importance and a key driver of economic development. It can bring solutions to many societal challenges from treating diseases to minimising the environmental impact of farming. However, socio-economic, legal and ethical impacts have to be carefully addressed”[i].

Accordingly, organizations are starting to make moves that act as building blocks for imminent change and transformation. With that in mind, Traci Gusher-Thomas[ii] has identified four trends that demonstrate how machine-learning is starting to bring real value to the workplace. It is stated that each of following four areas provides value to an organisation seeking to move forward with machine-learning and adds incremental value that can scale-up to be truly transformational.
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Internet, e-evidences and international cooperation: the challenge of different paradigms

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by Bruno Calabrich, Federal circuit prosecutor (Brazil)

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There is a crisis in the world today concerning e-evidences. Law enforcement authorities deeply need to access and analyze various kinds of electronic data for efficient investigations and criminal prosecutions. They need it not specifically for investigating and prosecuting so-called internet crimes: virtually any crime today can be committed via the internet; and even those which aren’t executed using the web, possibly can be elucidated by information stored on one or another node of the internet. The problem is that enforcement authorities not always, nor easily, can access these data[i], as the servers where they are stored are frequently located in a different country. Thus, international cooperation is frequently a barrier to overcome so that the e-evidence can be obtained in a valid and useful way. And, today, the differences around the world in the legal structures available for this task may not be helping a lot.

The most commonly known instruments for obtaining electronic data stored abroad are the MLATs – Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties –, agreements firmed between two countries for cooperating in exchanging information and evidences (not restricted to internet evidences) that will be used by authorities in investigations and formal accusations. The cooperation occurs from authority to authority, according to a bureaucratic procedure specified in each treaty, one requesting (where it’s needed) and the other (where it’s located) providing the data. But, in a fast-changing world, where crime and information are moving even faster, the MLATs are not showing to be the fastest and efficient way.  In Brazil, for instance, the percentage of success in the cooperation with the United States through its MLAT roughly reaches 20% of the cases. Brazil, US and other countries do not seem to be satisfied with that.
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Editorial of February 2019

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 by Felipe Debasa, Phd Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid

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IV Industrial Revolution social challenges. The Law, from discipline to tool? Reflections about the European Union

After World War II comes to a change an historical era. It is about the Present World or Present Time as historians point out[i] , or Anthropocene as geologists name. An era with new challenges and also challenges built on the legacy of the millions of dead of the world wars, totalitarianism, and nationalism.

“It is not a time for words, but a bold and constructive act”. With this phrase, Robert Schuman initiated the press conference that May 9th, 1950, in which he presented the document that would give rise to the current European Union. We Europeans are about to celebrate the 70th anniversary of that date that has allowed us to enjoy many things in peace and freedom.

With the change of the millennium, comes another new period dubbed as a IV Industrial Revolution, Industry 4.0 or Era of Technology. “The traditional world is crumbling, while another is emerging; and while we are in the middle and some of us without knowing what to do”[ii].

In 2016, I directed a summer course at the Menéndez Pelayo International University of Santander[iii] on the Future of Employment that was inaugurated by the Minister of the sector in Spain, in which we began to alert of the social challenges and about the tremendous revolution that came over us. We analysed, among other things, the jobs of the future, the digital transformation of companies, the new forms of teleworking, the role of women in this revolution; and so, we are warning of neologism that was about to appear, probably by regulated sectors without competition. And yes, that moment seems to have arrived.
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