JUSTICE FORUM (6333/08)
Letter from the Chairman to Bridget Prentice
MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice
This Communication was considered by Sub-Committee
E at its meeting of 12 March 2008.
We welcome this Commission initiative and consider
that the Forum could play a useful role in development and evaluation
of EU policies and legislation in the area of civil and criminal
justice. There is a need to enhance mutual trust across the EU
in other Member States' judicial processes and to the extent that
the new Forum can play a role in addressing this issue, we would
regard this as a very positive development.
We note your concerns regarding the proposed
participants in the Forum. We agree that there is a need for participation
by users of judicial systems and would be grateful for a full
list of participants once this is available. We strongly welcome
the proposed cooperation with CEPEJ and other relevant Council
of Europe bodies as appropriate. We think the key to the success
of this sort of initiative is a focussed approach with the right
experts attending the relevant meetings and an attempt at the
end of each meeting to issue clear-cut conclusions. Expenditure
should be kept within reasonable parameters.
Like the Government, we would also expect the
Forum to be in addition to the Commission's usual consultation
process and would be grateful if you would, following discussion
with the Commission, confirm that this is the case.
The Commission proposes a role for the Forum
in examining the matter of statistics. We have in the past emphasised
the need for evidence-based policy and the importance of collecting
appropriate and reliable statistics. We have also drawn attention
to the relevance of statistics collected by the Council of Europe
and their potential value in informing proposed EU policy. It
is encouraging to see that the Commission has recognised the need
for further examination of statistics in civil and criminal justice
and we trust that the Government will encourage this aspect of
the Forum's work.
We have decided to retain the Communication
under scrutiny. We look forward to hearing from you following
the first Forum plenary on 15 April with a summary of the
proceedings and your views.
13 March 2008
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