At its 45th plenary meeting held in Strasbourg on 4 and 5 December 2025, the CEPEJ adopted its programme of activities for 2026-2027 and renewed the terms of reference of its Working Groups on the evaluation of judicial systems (CEPEJ-WG-EVAL), quality of justice (CEPEJ-WG-QUAL) and cyberjustice and artificial intelligence (CEPEJ-WG-CYBERJUST). It also decided to expand the missions of the Working Group on judicial time management (CEPEJ-SATURN) by creating a new Working Group on the efficiency of judicial proceedings. A new Roadmap for the next four years was also adopted in the form of a new Action Plan, known as the Valletta Plan for 2026–2029, which aims to strengthen the Rule of law by improving trust in judicial systems.

Pursuing its reflection, initiated several years ago, on the assessment of the workload of legal professionals as a means of improving the efficiency of justice, the CEPEJ adopted a tool designed to help judicial systems set up a case weighting mechanism, as well as a Study on systems for measuring workload in courts.

Guidelines on the use of generative artificial intelligence for courts have also been adopted with the aim of supporting legal professionals in the rapid and ever-increasing evolution of AI use in the professional sphere, in the absence of systematic national regulations on the subject.

A checklist on access to justice has also been prepared by the Working Group on quality of Justice and endorsed by the CEPEJ as a solid and evolving basis for courts wishing to improve users' access to justice at various levels. Finally, a Guide on the Participation of Children in Family Mediation completes the CEPEJ's toolkit on mediation.

The Working Group on the Evaluation of Judicial Systems (CEPEJ-GT-EVAL) reviewed the ambitious reform currently underway to update the evaluation process with the aim of obtaining more recent data through a revised, more concise Scheme. Participants were informed that the 2026 Evaluation report on European judicial systems, containing statistics for 2025, will be published next December, thanks to data collection that has already begun.

Finally, the winning initiative of the 2025 edition of the Crystal Scale of Justice, entitled “Schuldenfunctionaris/Debt officer” (Netherlands), which helps to provide solutions for people in debt, was presented to the participants of the plenary meeting, along with two special mentions, on the Justices of the Peace of Flanders (Belgium) and on the automation of payment orders (Spain).