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Project e-CODEX

Project e-CODEX

European interoperability due to the establishment of recognised standards:

  • Online application even beyond European borders
  • Efficient electronic communication between Europe’s justice authorities

The project "e-CODEX” (e-Justice Communication via Online Data Exchange), co-financed by the European Commission, under the direction of the justice ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2010-2016 has created a generic solution for a safe exchange of judiciary data; this solution helps to do both: provide a cross-border electronic access to law for citizens and companies in Europe and facilitate the electronic cooperation of justice agencies within Europe. This solution provides for a collaboration based on software elements and includes the development of uniform semantics and common standards for an exchange of documents and data as well as for identity management for which also the term “e-CODEX” has become a common name. Within the framework of follow-up projects Me-CODEX (“Maintenance of e-CODEX“) the Me-CODEX II, also co-financed by the EU, this solution is being enhanced and made ready for new application fields.

Due to the uniform standards, even between differently designed national IT solutions we can provide interoperability in a sustainable way. Thus a Europe-wide data exchange has been facilitated, without putting in question any of the IT applications that are already in use on national level. This way e-CODEX helps to implement the spirit of subsidiarity even in the field of European electronic communication in legal matters.

The European Commission wants “e-CODEX” to become the basis for multiple applications in asynchronous communication in the field of European electronic legal communications and, for that purpose, to be permanently managed by a European agency in the near future.

Specifically, e-CODEX is by now already in use in the Europe-wide connection of companies registers (BRIS=Business Register Interconnection System) and (partially) in the electronic processing of the European dunning procedures. In the field of criminal prosecution e-CODEX is applied in the process of exchange in rogatory letters in bilateral pilot projects; currently, they are intensely working on a Europe-wide infrastructure for such an exchange - in the perspective also to be used for electronic evidence. In civil-right proceedings e-CODEX is also intended to be used as a means of cross-border electronic transmission of process documents. Other pilot projects are in place for European cross-border proceedings for small claims as well as for the enforcement of cross-border maintenance claims (“iSupport”).

The current follow-up project Me-CODEX II with a considerable financial support from the European Commission is also coordinated by the ministry of justice of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia on behalf of the Commission for Information Technology in the Judiciary of the federal and state governments. Further participants include the ministries responsible for the judiciary in France, Austria and the Netherlands as well as the European Lawyers Foundation and The Hague Conference on Private International Law.

For more information  refer to the website of the project www.e-codex.eu.

Contact: The Ministry of Justice of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia IT 2, Martin-Luther-Platz 40, 40212 Düsseldorf, Germany poststelle@jm.nrw.de