By Joana Covelo de Abreu (Editor and Key-staff member of CitDig Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence) 

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2023 EU Justice Scoreboard – how independent and efficient justice systems can strengthen the business dimension in the EU through digitalisation?

The current European Semester is devoted to sustainable economic growth, within the EU’s annual cycle of economic policy coordination. Insofar, in the 2023 annual sustainable growth survey [COM(2022) 780 final], the European Commission stressed that “[g]ood governance and respect for the rule of law, in particular independent, quality and efficient justice systems […], are key determinants of an economy that works for people” – in fact, there is a “link between effective justice systems and Member States’ business environment” since “[w]ell-functioning and fully independent justice systems can have a positive impact on investment and are key for investment protection, and therefore contribute to productivity and competitiveness”.

Published last June 8^th, 2023, the EU Justice Scoreboard [COM(2023) 309 final] acts as a comparative tool to assist the EU and its Member States to understand the justice systems’ state so it can be improved “by providing objective, reliable and comparable data on a number of indicators relevant for the assessment of the efficacy, quality and independence of justice systems in all Member States”.

In this sense, “efficiency”, “quality” and “independence” act as the primal indicators so Member States can understand which efforts they must undertake “to create an environment which is more efficient, better for investments as well as business and citizen-friendly”.

Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) enhanced Member States’ economies to overcome the economic and financial stress caused by the pandemics; by allowing the investment on justice systems, it made clearer how these play a vital role for an investment-friendly business environment: when there is a judicial system that actually guarantees the enforcement of rights, “creditors are more likely to lend, businesses have higher confidence and are dissuaded from opportunistic behaviour, transaction costs are reduced and innovative businesses are more likely to invest”, making an independent and effective justice quite relevant for “sustained economic growth”.

Digitalisation of justice continues to be a key area of analysis through this Scoreboard and it allows the direct link between the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and justice fields: RRF established that Member States should allocate a “minimum of 20% to the digital transition” of its loans and non-repayable financial support, which have already exceeded that percentage as Member States communicated an “estimated digital expenditure at 26%”; insofar, RRF offered “an opportunity to address country-specific recommendations related to national justice systems and to accelerate national efforts to complete de digital transformation of justice systems”.

e-Justice, particularly when it relates on making efforts to promote digitalisation of national justice systems, plays a role on both enhancing RRF execution and making EU Member States more attractive to businesses. The EU Justice Scoreboard established four categories that influence the quality of a justice system: i) accessibility of justice for citizens and businesses; ii) adequate financial and human resources; iii) putting in place of assessment tools; and iv) digitalisation. In this sense, despite digitalisation is one of these categories, we will be able to see how it appears as a cross-cutting priority.

Under accessibility to justice systems, the Commission was able to underline that the cost of litigation can be a key element on resorting to justice systems since higher court and legal fees can determine an affection to justice’s effectiveness. From businesses standpoint, several were the companies (small, medium and larger ones) that underlined they always look how national judicial systems act facing a litigation where they might get involved before investing or allocating their services in a specific Member State – showcasing, in practice, how “healthy” justice systems can operate as key attractive features to foster new and, particularly, innovative businesses. 

Concerning resources – which refer to “the necessary […] physical and technical infrastructure, and well qualified, trained and adequately paid staff of all kinds” – the Commission concluded that “[w]ithout adequate facilities, tools or staff with the required qualifications, skills and access to continuous training, the quality of proceedings and decisions is undermined”. In this sense, judges must have particular sensitivity to social reality and must have access to training opportunities as these play an “important contribution to the quality of judicial decisions and the justice service delivered to citizens”. In this sense, digitalisation has, once again, an important role: on one hand, the use of digital solutions (digital-ready rules), such as those on videoconferencing on court proceedings and on the admissibility of digital evidence allow justice systems to be updated with new technological dimensions perceived on daily-basis interactions and to resort to new forms of providing evidence as, sometimes, digital evidence is the only one available to parties.

Furthermore, information and communication tools must be put in place to allow “distance communication and secure remote access to workplace” as long as “secure electronic communication between courts/prosecution services and legal professionals and institutions” is needed. In fact, these tools can allow new disruptive ways for judicial operators to work which can lead to a significant time reduction of proceedings, another feature seen as particularly relevant from businesses’ standpoint.

Establishing the link between the latter two categories – accessibility and resources –, online access to courts can also say much concerning justice systems’ quality: “[t]he electronic submission of claims, the possibility to monitor and advance a proceeding online or serve documents electronically can […] facilitate access to justice for citizens and businesses (or their legal representatives) and reduce delays and costs” while bringing courts closer to citizens and businesses and increasing public trust in the justice system. Another measure is the access to judgments – if these are made available online, it increases transparency of justice systems while allowing citizens and businesses to easily understand their rights. Notwithstanding, if these judgments are made available through user-friendly tools which allow them to be re-used, justice systems would also be “algorithm-friendly, enabling innovative ‘legal tech’ applications that support practitioners”. In this sense, businesses – particularly those connected to new disruptive technologies and developing their activities in innovative domains – would find the EU a space where they could resort to open and reusable data, creating a prosperous environment to innovation companies. 

As previously stressed in the Communication of the European Commission on “Identifying and addressing barriers to the Single Market” [COM(2020) 93 final], “Europe is now leading the way towards the […] transition [on] digital leadership” which determined the modernization of the single market. In this sense, European e-Justice tools are also perceived as quite relevant to achieve that goal: since 2017 that the interconnection of business registers system (BRIS) is available on the e-Justice portal: it links registers of Member States, allowing “companies and entrepreneurs to search and obtain free information on EU limited liability companies in a multilingual and user-friendly way”.

Once again, high-quality, independent and effective Member States’ judicial systems can help achieving that modernization of the single market since several digital tools and ICT components will also have a cross-border repercussion and, insofar, will mostly be useful to citizens and businesses that exercise economic freedoms.

Picture credits: Photo by Ekaterina Bolovtsova on Pexels.com