2017 European Union Justice Scoreboard

The European Union (EU) recently released its fifth annual Justice Scoreboard.

The goal of the Scoreboard is to provide a comparative overview of the efficiency, quality and independence of EU Member States’ justice systems.

"The 2017 edition ... examines new aspects of the functioning of justice systems:

 >  to better understand how consumers access the justice system, it examines which channels they use to submit complaints against companies (e.g. courts, out of court methods), how legal aid and court fees influence access to justice, particularly for persons at-risk-of-poverty, the length of court proceedings and before consumer authorities and how many consumers are using the online dispute resolution (ODR) platform which became operational in 2016.
>  to keep track of the situation of judicial independence in Member States, this edition presents the result of a new survey on the perception of citizens and companies; it shows new data on safeguards for protecting judicial independence.
>  this edition continues to examine how national justice systems function in specific areas of EU law relevant for the single market and for an investment-friendly environment. It presents a first overview of the functioning of national justice systems when applying EU anti-money laundering legislation in criminal justice. It also examines the length of proceedings for provisional measures to prevent imminent damages in certain areas of law.
>  in order to have a clearer picture of the current use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in justice systems, this edition presents the results from a survey of lawyers on how they communicate with courts and for which reasons they use ICT.
>  as standards on the functioning of courts can drive up the quality of justice systems, this edition examines in more detail standards aiming to improve the court management and the information given to parties on progress of their case..."