CA20131 - Efficient Justice for All: Improving Court Efficiency through EU Benchmarking (EfficientJustice)

Legal systems all over Europe increasingly suffer from congestion. As the number of court cases increases, the ability of legal systems to produce high-quality, timely court decisions appears to be under pressure. Societal costs of this inefficiency in our legal systems are enormous, as EU citizens, firms and (local) governments face uncertainty, incur legal expenses and are forced to postpone decisions that are often key to furthering investment, wellbeing and growth.

This COST proposal is built on the idea that the only way we can face his challenge head on, is by exploiting the differences in institutional, legal and economic circumstances in EU countries to identify best practices. This idea in itself is not new, and has for example been successfully applied to the benchmarking of electricity networks in EU countries. Likewise, a comparison of legal systems does not have to start from scratch, as a lot of the codification that is required has already been done.

With this proposal, we want to take the crucial next step: by bringing together a strong team of experts in benchmarking with a strong focus on how to handle the heterogeneity that is present in Europe