Study visit from the Council of Europe's TJENI programme

Mr Edouard Rottier, judge referee, chief of the Open Data project unit for court decisions of the Documentation, Research and Reporting Department (SDER) of the Court of Cassation, presented the Open Data for court decisions project. It has been planned, since 2016, that all court decisions handed down publicly should be published and accessible for the public. The Open data project, piloted by the Cour de cassation, insure the respect of the fundamental rights of individuals, particularly the right to the protection of personal datas. Edouard Rottier highlighted that artificial intelligence is used to guarantee the anonymity of court rulings.

Mr Haffide Boulakras, Deputy Director of the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature (ENM), in charge of magistrates continuing education and the school's international activities, and Ms Emmanuelle Laudic-Baron, magistrate in charge of the ENM's international department, presented how digital issues are integrated into initial and continuing education of magistrates. Digital training is provided both during the training of future magistrates, before they take up their duties, and when they are in office. Training courses are also organised in collaboration with several countries so that foreign judges can share their good practices.

Finally, participants shared their experience about the digitisation of justice in their respective courts. These exchanges highlighted the common desire to make court decisions accessible to citizens, while respecting privacy, notably through anonymisation. They also presented underway projects to digitise civil and criminal proceedings, to use digital technology to handle cases and to use artificial intelligence in the functioning of their courts.

The meeting was an opportunity to share our practices and questions and to highlight French initiatives about the digitisation and accessibility of courts' rulings. This project is a continuation of the Cour de cassation 2030 report, which recommended that the Court should giving itself resources to make all court rulings available to the public. Today, some 900,000 court decisions are published. The Court of Cassation plans to publish one million first instance, appeal and cassation decisions each year.