European Union Country Profiles on Access to Justice

This is a follow to the Library Boy post of August 19, 2013 entitled Canadian Bar Association Releases Summary Report on Access to Justice in Canada.

In 2011, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) produced a series of 27 Country thematic studies on access to justice, one for each EU member country:

"The national thematic studies constituted the background information drawn on by the FRA in order to compile its comparative report on ‘Access to justice in Europe: an overview of challenges and opportunities'. The summaries provide further details on the national situation in the selected areas covered by the comparative report. "

Each country profile describes the following elements:

• the national court system
• restrictions regarding access
• length of proceedings
• the existence or not of mechanisms for the speedy resolution of particular cases
• access to non-judicial procedures
• legal aid
• forms of satisfaction available to the winning party
• adequacy of compensation
• legal costs
• rules on burden of proof

The overall comparative report can be found on the FRA website. It concluded that victims were often deterred or unable to enforce their rights because of the:

• excessive length of proceedings
• high legal costs and difficulty in accessing legal aid
• restrictive rules on who may take a case to court
• a high degree of variation among Member States on the amounts of compensation awarded