RICERCA ITALIANA     

Judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters within the European Union. Experiences, results and perspectives.

Università degli Studi di Genova

Abstract

The building up of effective forms of judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters within the European Union is essential to both the conservation and the development of an area of freedom, security and justice, within which the free movement of persons has to be guaranteed.
In the light of the ongoing European process of integration, the research aims at critically analysing all instruments concerning the exercise of jurisdictional competence and the recognition of judgments in civil and commercial matters (with regard to both the more "traditional" ones, like the 1968 Brussels Convention and the Regulation No.44/2001,and the more recent ones, like Regulations No.1346/2000 on insolvency proceedings; No.1348/2000 on the service in the Member States of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil or commercial matters;No.1347/2000 on jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement of judgments in matrimonial matters and in matters of parental responsibility for children of both spouses,replaced by Reg. No.2201/2003;No.1206/2001 on cooperation between Member States' courts in the taking of evidence in civil or commercial matters;No.805/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council, creating a European Enforcement Order for uncontested claim)judgment.
As to the criminal field, the research aims at examining relatively new forms of judicial cooperation between Member States, such as the joint investigation teams, the 2000 Convention on Mutual Assistance in >>>

Principal Investigator

Sergio Maria CARBONE Università degli Studi di GENOVA

Research Objectives

The primary objective of the proposed research is, as it can be inferred from the title itself, not only the study of the EC instruments of judicial cooperation in both civil and criminal matters that are already existing or to be adopted in the near future,but also the comparison between experiences, results and the possible evolution of such fields.
Thanks to a division of competences and within the scientific autonomy that characterises each Research Unit, (also on the basis of the multisectoral approach of the research), on the one hand, the aim pursued by the local Units belonging to the Universities of Turin and Milan will be to provide an analysis of the current stage of current developments of judicial cooperation in both the civil and criminal fields, highlighting the most significant problems connected with the application of the instruments which have been enacted by the EC institutions within the first and third pillars of the European Union. On the other hand, the Units belonging to the University Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan and to the University of Genoa will analyse some of the proposals presented both in civil and criminal matters in order to investigate ways of improving the mechanisms of judicial cooperation which are now under discussion within the European Union.
More specifically, it has to be said that the objective pursued by the University of Turin is double. In such context, therefore, attention will be paid, not only to the >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The scientific starting point of this research is founded:
a) on the choices made by the communitarian legislator in the field of civil and criminal judicial cooperation (sometimes also comparing such choices under an international law perspective), in order to maintain and develop an area of freedom, security and justice - having particular regard to the freedom of movement of persons - and to guarantee the existence of the fifth freedom, which concerns the movement of judgments.
b) with specific regard to the field of judicial cooperation in criminal matters, on the measures that have already been taken by national legislators (in particular by the Italian one) and which are going to be adopted within the EU, since, as it is well known, the instruments adopted within the third pillar, unlike the EC regulations, are not directly applicable throughout Member States and must be transposed into every national legal system;
c) on the doctrinal contributions which have been listed in the bibliography provided by models A and B of every single unit taking part to the Research;
d) on the decisions of the ECCJ (with particular regard to the ones on judicial cooperation in civil matters, seen that the number of its judgments on criminal judicial cooperation is still exiguous)as well as of national (Italian and foreigner) and international courts (in particular, of the European Court of human rights).
Further and more detailed information on the >>>