March 2023 – February 2026

Support to modernisation of court management in Georgia

The project is funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in their Partnership for Good Governance III (2023-2027). An earlier phase of this programme (January 2020 - February 2023) was supported by the European Union.

 Context and objectives of the project

The project “Support to modernisation of court management in Georgia” will assist the improvement of the efficiency of the Georgian judicial system, notably in reducing backlogs and length of proceedings, facilitating the modernisation of court management including through implementation of new cyber justice tools, building the capacity of justice professionals, as well as increasing judges' referrals to mediation and improving data collection of mediation cases based on the CEPEJ Mediation Development Toolkit.

The project will support further application of European standards and will contribute to the implementation Georgian Strategy and Action Plan on Judiciary adopted in October 2022, and requirements stemming from Georgia’s candidacy for membership of the European Union.

Main activities

• Individual court coaching projects to improve court performance and reduce backlog
• Recommendations to introducing a tool to fighting backlogs
• Recommendations on the optimisation of the workload of judges and court staff
• Support to conducting court users’ satisfaction surveys in pilot courts
• Capacity building activities to improve the collection, processing and analysis of data on the functioning of the judicial system and judicial statistics according to the CEPEJ methodology (in coordination with the regional project Justice Dashboard EaP)
• Introducing specific training modules on the efficiency and quality of justice
• Organising Managers' Forums on selected topics
• Capacity building activities for judges on referral to mediation based on relevant CEPEJ  tools

Project beneficiaries and stakeholders

Court Users, High Council of Justice, Courts, High School of Justice, Independent Inspector of the High Council of Justice, judges, court staff, Mediators’ Association.

Translated CEPEJ documents

• Case weighting in judicial systems - CEPEJ Studies No. 28 (2020)
• Toolkit for the implementation of the Guidelines on Cyberjustice (CEPEJ(2019)7)
• European Ethical Charter on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Judicial Systems and their environment (2018)
• Guidelines on how to drive change towards Cyberjustice (CEPEJ(2016)13)
• Declaration on lessons learnt and Challenges faced by the judiciary during and after the Covid-19 Pandemic
• Good practice guide on Structural measures to improve the functioning of civil and administrative justice in addition to the effective domestic remedies required by Article 13 of the ECHR (CEPEJ(2016)14)
• Handbook for conducting satisfaction surveys aimed at Court users in Council of Europe's member States (CEPEJ(2016)15)
• Measuring the quality of justice (CEPEJ(2016)12
• Implementation guide "Towards European timeframes for judicial proceedings" (CEPEJ(2016)5)
• Guidelines of the CEPEJ SATURN Centre for judicial time management – comments and implementation examples (CEPEJ-SATURN(2015)2)
• Guidelines on the Creation of Judicial Maps to Support Access to Justice within a Quality Judicial System (CEPEJ(2013)7Rev)
• CEPEJ Guidelines on judicial statistics (GOJUST) (CEPEJ(2008)11
• Saturn guidelines for judicial time management (CEPEJ(2008)8)
• European judicial systems - Edition 2008 (data 2006) : Overview
• Compendium of “best practices” on time management of judicial proceedings (CEPEJ(2006)13