en.europa-eu-audience

CURIA, European Case Law and RSS feeds: well done but it could be better

Version française

Recently, with the renovation of its Internet website , the Court of Justice of the European Communities provides  RSS feeds for press releases (in each of  the 22 languages!) 
Well done! We would also appreciate such flows on the EUR-LEX , a reference site for EU law. ( http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm ). They were planned for late 2007! (see note of  November 12, 2007 at http://europa-eu-audience.typepad.com/en/2007/11/eur-lex-review-.html ) 

However, the titles of  the Curia RSS feeds are not explicit enough. See below for  June 2009. 
We would also like a feature similar to that offered by the excellent site of the BnF on Gallica2 (http://gallica.bnf.fr ) as explained by the two images attached to this post.
At least, as regards the Court of Justice, you should be able to select the jurisdiction (Court, CFI, ..) and the main field to avoid too much "noise".

 

European Court of Justice Statistics for 2008

Version française

Source: http://eulaw.typepad.com/eulawblog/2009/02/court-statistics-for-2008.html

The Courts have made public some statistics for 2008 and made a press release. As always, there some good news and some bad news.

For the Court of Justice, there is a decline in the number of preliminary references made but a general increase in the number of cases brought before it (592 cases in 2008 as compared with 580 in 2007).

The Court of Justice has got cracking with cases too:

"As regards the duration of proceedings in 2008, there was a considerable improvement. Thus, for preliminary rulings, the duration of proceedings was on average 16.8 months, that is 3 months less than in 2006. A comparative analysis shows that the average duration of preliminary ruling proceedings has reached its lowest level for 20 years. As regards direct actions and appeals, the average duration was 16.9 months and 18.4 months respectively (18.2 and 17.8 months respectively in 2007)."

The Court of Justice dealt with three urgent preliminary rulings, while the urgent procedure was requested in three other cases but not granted.

The number of new cases brought before the Court of First Instance has increased also: 629 cases were brought in 2008, compared with 522 in 2007 and 432 in 2006.

The Court of First Instance has also pressed on with a lot of cases:

"The Court of First Instance dealt with 605 cases during 2008, which represents a 52% increase compared with 2007, whilst the number of hearings held in 2008 doubled: 341 compared with 172 in 2007. The average duration of proceedings decreased: 24.5 months compared with 27.7 in 2007."

For the 2007 statistics, see our post here.

European Legal e-Access Conference 10, 11 and 12 Decembre 2008 in Paris

Version française

Several governmental and private initiatives have been coordinated by the Secretariat-General of the French Government in order to organize, under France’s EU presidency, an event intended to inform the public about the progress of projects that have been carried out in France and in Europe. Those projects are favouring the improvement of access to law and the elaboration of law thanks to technological developments, and to promote the improvements that have been made in this field. Since the law of the Member States started to be published via the Internet a decade ago, a European “Digital Legal Area” composed of several elements (whether public or private, with charge or open source) has progressively emerged. With the development of this area, it is easier to put together and compare the legal systems on one hand, and the technological standards enabling their digital broadcasting on the other hand. The Official Journals of the Member States play a key role in that process. The have gained a new dimension, by participating actively to the economic life of their country, by contributing to the budget orthodoxy of their regulatory authority through innovation in the field of self-financing, and finally appear as a privileged way to experience the e-administration. In the same time, most of the States are facing a growing (...)

Some short comments :

- http://www.service-public.gouv.fr  is one of the best websites that makes law accessible to the general public.

- European law applicable to the  European citizen is the least widely known law ,not only to the average citizen but also to local or national authorities

-European institutions' websites do not "press on" their information on to civil society at large, private sector or non-profit making publishers and do not encourage  further distribution by other  potential mediators .they still consider themselves as the centre of the world.

-the public sector information directive is still badly applied in most European countries

 

See all the presentations on http://www.legalaccess.eu/?lang=en

"Law via the Internet" -- LII 2008 conference in Florence

Version française

Source : http://www.precisement.org/blog/breve.php3?id_breve=534

On the 30th and 31st of October 2008, the 9th International Conference "Law via the Internet" will be hosted in Florence, organized by the Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of the Italian National Research Council (ITTIG-CNR), acting as a member of the Legal Information Institutes network (LIIs).
See / Voir : http://www.ittig.cnr.it/LawViaTheInternet/

Topics of the Conference / Programme

• Free access to law: the situation in different geographic areas
• Legal aspects concerning management, creation and filing of digital information
• Legal blogs and wikis
• Open legal archives
• Quality of legal information available on the web
• Right to legal information as a fundamental right
• Semantic tools for the access to legal information
• Information technology used in the process of creating rules
• Open source in the field of law
• Computerization of justice
• Recent developments and trends in online legislation, case law and doctrine
• Development of open technical standards  

Speakers / Orateurs http://www.ittig.cnr.it/LawViaTheInternet/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=29

Mme Berteloot and Mr Berger (from Publications Office) will represent the EU institutions.

Reference / Référence :
http://www.precisement.org/blog/article.php3?id_article=103
Les Legal Informations Institutes (LII) ou le mouvement pour la diffusion libre du droit
"Free access to law"
Un billet du 9 avril 2007 par Emmanuel Barthe

Access to documents: Turco judgement

Version française: http://europa-eu-audience.typepad.com/fr/2008/07/accs-aux-docume.html
In a judgement delivered on 1 July the Court of Justice of the European Communities allows access to legal advice Council on legislative acts only on the grounds that their disclosure could create uncertainty about the legality of legislation adopted in the wake of these opinion.
Print: http://www.eu-logos.org/newsletter_print.php?idnl=765
Source: http://www.eu-logos.org heading NEA say

The national judge in the European judicial system

Version française

European Parliament, from 6.3.2008, DRAFT REPORT on the role of the national judge in the European judicial system
(2007/2027(INI)) Committee on Legal Affairs, Rapporteur: Diana Wallis
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+COMPARL+PE-402.874+01+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN (english version)

Source: EU-logos

2007 Annual Reports from the Courts

Version française

"Everyone with an interest in EU law should read them. They contain a survey of what each jurisdiction considers to be the major cases and other developments of the year.”

http://eulaw.typepad.com/eulawblog/2008/04/2007-annual-rep.html

Source; EU Law blog (01/04/2008)

Reference : http://curia.europa.eu/fr/instit/presentationfr/index.htm

Justice Forum: Networking in the Area of Justice, Freedom and Security

Version française

“The Commission has announced that it will set up a "Justice Forum" on April 15th 2008 to talk about the application of the laws in the area of justice, freedom and security”.

Source: Bartolus (EU Law Blog) at http://eulaw.typepad.com/eulawblog/2008/02/justice-forum-n.html

Good idea

New Legifrance service

Version française

The Legisfrance service for access to french law was updated beginning 2008.
See the comments of some users ( in french language)

« Legifrance 2008 : commentaire à chaud sur les premières réactions (3)

from ServiceDoc Info by Stephane Cottin. Pour faire suite (en vitesse) sur les deux premiers articles 16 janvier 2008 : découverte de Legifrance 2008 (1) et 16 janvier 2008 : Legifrance 2008, premières réactions (2), et avant une analyse plus poussée, je me permets de faire quelques petites remarques au vu des trois premiers jours de commentaires et d'utilisation de la nouvelle version … »

See also the post of Emmanuel Barthe :  Legifrance 2008 : la cavalerie arrive un peu en retard, mais toujours à temps published on 26 janvier 2008

EUR-Lex, the access to European Union law :  english version

When an efficient and personalised service to notify the news by email and by RSS feeds will be vailable (it was promised for end 2007) !?

Globalex and LLRX: law research

Version française

To be noted, a post by Stephane Cottin about GlobaLex

“GlobaLex is an electronic legal publication dedicated to international and foreign law research. Published by the Hauser Global Law School Program at NYU School of Law

GlobaLex is committed to the dissemination of high-level international, foreign, and comparative law research tools in order to accommodate the needs of an increasingly global educational and practicing legal world.”

See also Law and technology resources for legal professionals http://www.llrx.com/