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Description
The project “Foster transparency of judicial decisions and enhancing the national implementation of the ECHR” is implemented by the Council of Europe (CoE) and will cover Cyprus, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia, engaging in cooperation with the ministries of justice and supreme courts of these countries. The main aim is to strengthen human rights protection and the rule of law by increasing of consistency of national judicial decisions with the respective European standards. With this intervention, the CoE aims to improve transparency and consistency of national judicial decisions and exchange of the most up to date information on human rights issues. The project is designed following the entry into force of Protocol no. 15 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to foster cooperation on enhancing the national implementation of the ECHR through digitalisation processes ongoing in national judiciaries.
Transparency of the judicial process and consistency of judicial decisions can be improved through their publication. This can be done with the application of special technical and methodological solutions which could assist in the automatization of the preparation of the document for its publication. At the same time, such technical solutions can be used for the recognition of some keywords in the document and proposed categorisation. This will, inter alia, allow for the identification of human rights issues (including new challenges), collection and analysis of additional internal statistics on various human rights cases, revealing discrepancies and inconsistencies in judicial decision-makins. Additionally, categorisation may be used for adjustment of search in national case law databases. Effective implementation of proposed methodologies and novel IT tools shall boost ECHR-compliant adjudication in national courts in line with the principle of subsidiarity.
Summary of project results
The TJENI project (Foster Transparency of Judicial Decisions and Enhancing National Implementation of the ECHR) was initiated to promote human rights and to enhance transparency in judicial decision-making across Europe.
Project main objectives:
- To foster case-law transparency and accessibility to legal professionals and general public
- To support improvement of consistency between national jurisprudence and human rights standards set in the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights
By offering national judiciaries innovative methodological and IT solutions, the project aimed to foster transparency, consistency, and alignment with European human rights standards.
Key project activities:
- Assessment of the existing state of play, technological setup and legal framework in the partner country
- Design of particular action plans for each partner country for piloting of the methodological and technical solutions to assist in improvement of internal consistency and transparency of judicial decision
- Development of general methodological and technical solutions to assist in improving internal consistency and transparency of judicial decisions, early identification, information and analysis of human rights issues
- Exchange of existing best practices in the partner countries and at the regional European level on the topics of human rights and early identification of systemic human rights issues
These solutions and best practices have enabled national authorities to gain a deeper understanding of the issues that cause problems for the internal consistency of judicial decisions and the ways in which it can be improved (including through the public availability of judicial decisions), ultimately leading to a better identification of systemic human rights problems by national courts.