The UIHJ, represented by its Honorary First Vice-President, Mathieu Chardon, participated in this meeting of the CEPEJ Working Group on the Evaluation of Judicial Systems of the Council of Europe member states.
In accordance with its 2026-2027 mandate, the GT-EVAL is instructed to implement the common tool set up by the CEPEJ which aims at evaluating in an objective manner the functioning of the judicial systems in Europe and those of its observers, as well as developing tools to measure the efficiency and quality of justice, notably relevant indicators or indexes.
As decided, the new evaluation cycle for the judicial systems of Council of Europe Member States is now annual, rather than biennial. The first annual cycle is to be adopted by the CEPEJ during its 47th plenary meeting, to be held in Strasbourg in December 2026. The 52nd meeting of the GT- EVAL was therefore particularly important for achieving the expected goals.
In this context, CEPEJ President Francesco Depasquale made a point of attending in person. He welcomed the members of the GT-EVAL, as well as its scientific experts, the CEPEJ observer members, including the UIHJ, and the invited delegation from Kazakhstan, along with the members of the CEPEJ Secretariat under the leadership of Muriel Décot, Executive Secretary of the CEPEJ, and GT-EVAL Secretary Christel Schurrer, also Deputy Secretary of the CEPEJ. The meeting was chaired by Jaša Vrabec (Slovenia), GT-EVAL President. The other members of the working group for the 2026-2027 term are Joanne Battistino (Malta), Michel Daccache (France), Seçkin Koçer (Turkey), Simone Kress (Germany), and Martina Vrdoljak (Croatia).
Among the agenda items, the GT-EVAL focused its discussions on the 2026 evaluation cycle of European judicial systems based on 2025 data. Specifically, it addressed the state of play of the 2024 and 2025 data collection, the 2024 data and odd years in the Evaluation report and CEPEJ-STAT, the content of the first part of the 2026 Report “European analysis”, the content of the 2026 country profiles and “European profile” (indicators at the European level), and the CEPEJ-STAT database.
The meeting also addressed the 2027 European Judicial System CEPEJ Evaluation Cycle (2026 data), with a brainstorming on the possible evolution of the questionnaire and the preparation of the first thematic report on ICT with eventual new questions. The discussions also focused on the coordination with two other CEPEJ working groups (GT-QUAL and GT-EFF) on indicators, as well as the cooperation with the European Commission (EU Justice Scoreboard, Eurostat, Western Balkans Scoreboard, and Eastern Partnership Countries Scoreboard).
