Digitising cross-border judicial cooperation in the EU – 2nd EU Civil Justice Seminar
News
Guest lecture International Commercial Courts Cyprus
Xandra Kramer gave a guest lecture on ‘International commercial courts: a game changer in international litigation?’ at the Neapolis University Pafos in Cyprus on 12 April 2024. She discussed the rise of international commercial courts in the Middle East and Europe, in the context of needs of international business, court specialisation and access to justice and in relation to international arbitration.
Focussing on key features of these courts she gave insights on the different courts, and in particular the Singapore and Netherlands Commercial Court. Highlighting some innovative features and the opportunities the Hague Judgments Convention of 2019 offers, she concluded that these courts have an effect on the international litigation market, but they have not triggered a huge shift from arbitration or other courts to these new business courts.
Published: June 9, 2021
The second EU Civil Justice seminar took place on Friday, 21 May 2021. On Focus during this seminar were the attempts of the European Union to digitise cross-border judicial cooperation. The aim of this initiative is to reduce the hurdles for such cooperation and eliminate the need for paper. Digital technologies are mature and safe enough to exchange sensitive documents between Member States institutions. Both citizens and public institutions will benefit from the speed and low costs of these solution. Considering this perspective, the European Commission is considering different routes which the speakers of the seminar discussed. Gösta Petri from the DG Justice explained the background and some of the implications that the digitisation of EU cross-border collaboration implies. He stressed the importance of digitisation and the need to evaluate already exiting tools. The next speaker, Sandra Taal from the Ministry of Justice of the Netherlands, provided an overview of eCodex, a cross-border communication infrastructure for the exchange of documents in Europe. eCodex has proven to be a very useful and reliable tool which explains why the EU plans to invest more on it. Taal agrees with Petri about the need to integrate eCodex with any other possible solution that Commission’s consultation will produce. The third speaker, Alina Ontanu from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, provided an extensive and in-depth overview of several European attempt to digitise cross-border judicial collaboration. While these experiences have had different degrees of success, they should be considered in their entirety and better orchestrated to achieve their goal. Erlis Themeli, who served as host and moderator, used the development of the voting procedure for the Eurovision Song Contest (which was taking place in Rotterdam during that same week) to make parallels with the need for more digitisation in Europe. This was the spark that ignited the discussion about the importance of cross-border digitisation, which turned out to be both inspiring and insightful for the speakers and the audience alike.