Make the European e-Justice Portal a one-stop shop for information on European justice issues and cross-border electronic services

Potential of action

The European e-Justice Portal is conceived as a "one-stop (electronic) shop" for information on European justice and access to European judicial procedures. The Portal's objective is to contribute to the creation of a single European judicial area by facilitating access to justice, enabling electronic cross-border judicial proceedings and judicial cooperation.

More than 10 million citizens face judicial procedures involving different EU countries every year. The Portal helps them find relevant information when dealing with events such as divorce, death, litigation, succession or even moving house. They can find a legal practitioner in another country and learn how to avoid costly court cases through mediation, where to bring a lawsuit, which country's law applies to their case and whether they are eligible for legal aid. The Portal will contribute to simplification and confidence in cross-border proceedings and will reduce the administrative burden by having more accessible, efficient and effective procedures. Businesses will also benefit from lower costs thanks to streamlined online legal procedures once access to various national registers is fully possible via the Portal.

Description of action

Since its launch in 2010, the Portal has constantly been extended with new content, features and modules.

In particular, several new interactive functionalities have been developed. As of 2020 these include:

• the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) search engine which provides a practical tool making legal research into the case law of European courts and the Member States much easier;
• the European Court Database which contains a thorough overview of courts in the Member States and allows citizens to establish very easily which court in which Member State is competent to deal with a particular legal issue;
• citizens in need of cross-border legal advice may use the Find a lawyer (FAL)/Find a notary (FAN) functionalities to identify lawyers/notaries who speak their language and have the necessary professional qualifications;
• the European Access Point to the Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS) allows businesses, citizens and legal practitioners to easily access information on companies and download company documents via a unified and multilingual access point on the Portal;
• the Fundamental Rights Interactive Tool (CLARITY) allows users to find the right organisation / non-judicial body to file a complaint related to the alleged violation of their fundamental rights.

For 2019-2020, new improvements include:

• making the Portal more user-friendly by revamping its look and feel and introducing a new information architecture;
• launch of the European Training Platform (ETP) module, which allows legal training providers to publish their offerings of training to interested legal practitioners (e.g. lawyers);
• introduction of an European access point to the e-CODEX system which will allow the electronic submission of European small claims and European payment orders to the competent national courts in specific countries;
• introduction of new and revised dynamic forms allowing citizens, businesses and practitioners to easily fill in the forms pursuant to European civil law legal instruments;

• establishing a Find a bailiff (FAB) search functionality allowing citizens to locate a judicial officer (bailiff) near their location;

• continued works towards the interconnection of land registers on a voluntary basis and the obligatory interconnection of the national insolvency registers further to Regulation (EU) 2015/848.

Further developments will follow the Multiannual European e-Justice Action Plan 2019-2023.

Main responsible at the European Commission: DG JUST

Target date: 2016

Status: Completed. The initiative, as proposed by the Commission in the Action Plan, has been achieved. This does not however, mean that the action is fully implemented across the EU. Furthermore, the e-Justice Portal is a constantly evolving platform, which is gradually being enriched with new information resources and interactive services.

More info (website):https://e-justice.europa.eu/home.do?plang=en&action=home