In the context of the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Ministry of Justice, in collaboration with the European Commission, organised the Conference ”e-Justice – Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Era”, between May 20th-21st, 2019, in Bucharest.
The conference addressed IT specialists, practitioners and decision-makers within the judicial systems and proposed to provide a forum to discuss the importance of using new technologies in the field of justice (eg artificial intelligence, Blockchain, process automation, etc.), while aiming at encouraging participants to reflect both on the opportunities and the challenges posed by the rapid pace of technological progress as well as on the philosophical and ethical aspects generated by the implementation of such instruments in the field of justice.
At the opening of the session, Mr. Ion Popa, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice emphasized that ”the continuous development and improvement of the informatic tools which are at the disposal of the judges and the justice are a sine-qua-non condition of the evolution of a judicial system. Furthermore, in our situation of the Member States, we consider that we must pay particular attention to facilitating European cross-border cooperation with the technology”.
The continuation of the commitments of the last decade, redeemed – concretely – by the projects foreseen in the Strategy and the Action Plan, proves, on one hand, that the e-Justice of Europe works both for the benefit of the citizens and for the benefit of the actors/ professionals involved in the judicial procedures, improving access to justice and enhancing mutual trust between the Member States of the European Union, on the other.
The focus of the conference was to encourage participants to reflect on the opportunities and challenges posed by the rapid pace of technological progress as well as on the philosophical and ethical aspects of the implementation of such instruments in the field of justice. EVIDENCE2e-CODEX, represented by Alexandra Tsvetkova, LIBRe Foundation (Bulgaria), took part in a session dedicated to the European technological framework on exchange of electronic evidence together with representatives of the e-CODEX Platform and DG Justice and Consumers.
More information on the basic scenario for exchange of evidence that EVIDENCE2e-CODEX is working on is presented in the last project event's brief. Additional information on the interim legal findings of the project, also presented during the conference will be published soon.
