At its 41st plenary meeting, held in Strasbourg on 4 and 5 December, the CEPEJ adopted guidelines on online alternative dispute resolution, prepared by its Working Group on Cyberjustice and Artificial Intelligence (CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST). These especially aim to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) mechanisms increasingly used in this context do not jeopardise the principles of fair trial.

In 2018, the CEPEJ adopted a European Ethical Charter on the use of artificial intelligence in judicial systems, which contains five key principles that should be respected by the judiciary to ensure a responsible use of AI, in accordance with the values of the Council of Europe. The CEPEJ saw fit to set out more practical guidelines for the application of these five principles and thus asked its Working Group on the Quality of Justice (CEPEJ-GT-QUAL) to draw up an Evaluation Tool for the operationalisation of the Charter. It provides a set of checks, measures, and safeguards that decision-makers in justice systems should follow when purchasing, designing, developing, implementing, and/or using AI in judicial systems and their environment. This tool also aligns its logic with those of compliance and risk-based regulations.

The CEPEJ also adopted a Report on Case Weighting for prosecutors, an innovative system to measure the workload of prosecutors. This Report, prepared by its Working Group on judicial time management (CEPEJ-SATURN), takes stock of existing systems in Europe and makes a comparative analysis. It could be followed by guidelines aimed at providing a roadmap for States wishing to set up a case weighting system in their country. The idea of setting up a database on European practices in reducing the backlog of cases was also endorsed, as a follow-up to the adoption last June of a tool on backlog reduction.

One of the missions of the CEPEJ is to contribute to the sharing of good practices in the field of justice, so a study session was organised at this meeting entitled "Artificial intelligence in the service of justice - concrete examples of implementation", during which four countries presented their latest AI tools: Germany a project using AI to support the processing of mass actions, Portugal the use of generative AI for a practical guide to access to justice (GPJ), Spain an initiative entitled "From voice to text, machine learning in judicial hearings," and Switzerland the anonymisation of court decisions by AI (ANOM). The winners of the 2023 Edition of the Crystal Scales of Justice also presented the rewarded initiatives in detail: Cyprus for the project "Kids in Court Game - KICGame" (Crystal Scales of Justice Prize), Belgium for the initiative "Civil and criminal chamber specialised in environmental and town planning matters" (special mention), and Belgium, France and Italy for the project "Facility Dogs Europe - FYDO" (special mention).

Finally, the CEPEJ adopted its draft programme of activities for 2024-2025 and renewed the terms of reference of its working groups on the evaluation of judicial systems (CEPEJ-GT-EVAL), quality of justice (CEPEJ-GT-QUAL), management of judicial time (CEPEJ-SATURN), and cyberjustice and artificial intelligence (CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST). This new Roadmap for the CEPEJ essentially aims to ensure that justice in Europe has tools that improve the quality and efficiency of justice while providing the necessary guarantees for a justice system that is continuously evolving in a digital environment.