Dear visitors of the CDCJ website,

It is my pleasure to be the new chair, as of 1 January 2026, of such a long-standing and respected steering committee of the Council of Europe.

The CDCJ has a long history spanning more than six decades and its output over the years is truly impressive: more than 60 treaties and 90 recommendations of the Committee of Ministers! And the CDCJ remains as busy as ever.

Last year saw the adoption of the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer (Luxembourg Convention), prepared by the CDCJ, which is the first international treaty to protect lawyers against increasing hurdles preventing them from practising independently. This is an achievement of which the CDCJ can legitimately be proud. It will continue to raise awareness of the Luxembourg Convention to secure the widest number of signatures and ratifications possible amongst member states. In the space of half a year, there have already been more than 20 signatures. It is important to seize this momentum to achieve as swift an entry into force as possible that will in turn allow non-member states from across the world to accede to it, making it a truly global instrument.

The CDCJ will also pursue its work on the follow-up to the Council of Europe Plan of Action on Strengthening Judicial Independence and Impartiality with the adoption of a first thematic review focusing on the career and training of judges.

It will continue breaking new grounds with the preparation of a Committee of Ministers recommendation on the rights of donor-conceived persons to know their origins, which will seek to find a delicate balance between the sometimes competing rights and interests of the different stakeholders, in particular donor-conceived persons, donors, parents, the authorities and clinics.

True to its previous work on reducing statelessness, the CDCJ is now focusing on how to reduce child statelessness. It is about to publish a compendium of promising practices on legal aid and representation, access to information and to justice for children in procedures relating to the determination of nationality or statelessness, and is currently revising the Committee of Ministers’ Recommendation CM/Rec(2009)13 on the nationality of children.

After having tackled the challenges of the increasing use of AI by public authorities in their contacts with and decisions affecting individual users as part of its recent update of the handbook “The Administration and You”, the CDCJ will proceed with examining the impact of the use of AI in the administration of justice, policing and border management.

These few examples exemplify the breadth of topics covered by the CDCJ as part of its mandate.

In parallel, the CDCJ will explore new topics for future work to best respond to our fast-evolving societies in order to safeguard the principles of rule of law that guide the organisation and indeed all democracies.

The CDCJ continues to have a busy agenda and will strive to produce as always instruments and tools that help member states and individuals in navigating ever more complex legal situations.

If you wish to learn more about the CDCJ, I invite you to browse this website to find more information on its different activities.

Signe Öhman