Communication from the Commission on the creation of a Forum for discussing EU justice policies and practice

The Forum aims to:

• contribute to dialogue between practitioners by providing a permanent platform. The aim is to facilitate exchanges of views, improve mutual understanding, gradually build up a common judicial culture and strengthen mutual trust between the stakeholders in the field of civil and criminal justice;
• collect data and establish best practice. This can be encouraged by means of European funding;
• consult practitioners early, i.e. at the stage of European justice policy design. The Forum will provide views on specific action being planned at European Union (EU) level in this field;
• draw up views on the overall functioning of European judicial cooperation;
• assist the Commission in drawing up its evaluation report on the application of EU measures in domestic legislation. In particular, the Forum provides it with assistance in its task of assessing the transposition of these measures by Member States;
• evaluate European policies. This involves assessing the impact of a measure by ensuring that it has achieved its specific objective and contributed to one of the overall objectives associated with the area of freedom, security and justice. It also aims to identify unforeseen consequences of any such measure;
• contribute to setting up compatible justice statistics. The Forum has the role of participating in the Commission’s work by giving its opinion on the statistical methods and the data gathered;
• take part in the procedure for selecting the winner of the "Crystal Scales of Justice" prize awarded for innovative practice to promote better operation of the system of civil justice. It may also participate in another two-yearly prize which the Commission is considering in respect of criminal justice.