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Ensuring Cross-border Justice for Citizens, Businesses and Legal Professionals

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Considered the flagship project of EU e-Justice, e-CODEX – which stands for e-Justice Communication via Online Data Exchange – is a decentralised IT system that provides an interoperable solution for cross-border exchange of judiciary data, thus allowing all Member States (citizens, businesses and legal professionals) to communicate with each other using their existing national systems.

Benefits of e-CODEX

  • Interoperability between EU Member States: Reusing by interconnecting national IT systems for seamless communication across countries.
  • Cross-Border Legal Procedures: Simplifying and digitalising legal processes such as the European Payment Order and Small Claims Procedure.
  • Secure Exchange of Legal Documents: Ensuring encrypted transmission of sensitive legal data between judicial authorities.
  • Support for Legal Practitioners: Enabling collaboration for lawyers, judges, and notaries in cross-border cases.
  • Enhancing Cooperation Between Judicial Authorities: Facilitating communication between courts, prosecutors, and law enforcement.
  • Access to Justice for Citizens and Businesses: Making cross-border legal actions and enforcement of rights easier.
  • Digital Transformation of Justice: Modernising justice systems by replacing paper-based workflows with digital systems.
  • Implementation of EU Legal Instruments: Supporting EU regulations.
  • Supporting Cross-Border Justice Innovations: Providing a framework for integrating future legal innovations.

Did You Know?

e-CODEX

  • … is the acronym for e-Justice Communication via Online Data Exchange;
  • … is decentralised and interoperable system for facilitating the secure electronic communication between judicial authorities, legal professionals and citizens in cross-border judicial proceedings, integrating autonomous domestic processes and IT applications in cross-border procedure execution;
  • … is currently used for 7 legal processes (use-cases) with 20+ more to be implemented by 2030;
  • … is used by all 27 EU Member States, as well as by the justice stakeholders, i.e. international and European professional organisations and EU bodies;
  • … was developed in 2010 by a Consortium of Member States and legal practitioners;
  • … was handed over to eu-LISA in June 2024 for the operational management and development of the system.

Find more about What is e-CODEX

 

Digital Procedural Standards

The DPS, consisting of the Business Process Model document and the XML schema definitions, specifies both the organisational and the semantic interoperability layers for a specific legal instrument. The DPS is created based on input from the legal layer and representatives of the business entities involved in the organisational layer.

Describing the DPS is not exclusively of value for legal and business representatives, but it provides valuable input for the configuration of the components in the infrastructural layer. See figure below, below. Moreover, a DPS on collaboration behaviour and data structures in use, provides essential input for the design, adaptation or configuration of the connected Case Management Systems that are deployed behind the e-CODEX Gateway and Connector.

Learn more about Digital Procedural Standards

 

e-CODEX Technical Infrastructure

As the e-CODEX standard sets out some requirements that must be adhered to when connecting to other participants in use-cases, the described building blocks are option as long as those standards are fulfilled and the technical understanding between e-CODEX participants remains stable.

Learn more about the e-CODEX Technical Infrastructure

 

Set up an e-CODEX configuration 

Technical preconditions for the installation

Download the e-CODEX Access Point Installation Guide to have all the information regarding the technical installation of e-CODEX.

Testing the e-CODEX configuration

Central Testing Platform (CTP)

Before going online with your e-CODEX environment, you should perform extensive tests. e-CODEX offers a Central Testing Platform (CTP) to support your testing activities. The e-CODEX CTP provides a full e-CODEX test environment and a Web Interface for sending and receiving test messages.

Testing activities should follow the e-CODEX testing strategy. An example of the latest strategy is available upon a request.

  1. The future e-CODEX participants should start with the national tests:
    • Internal tests conducted by developers;
    • Integration tests of components (Gateway and Connector);
    • Business tests of national service provider (producing a document and sending it to the national Gateway);
    • Mapping tests will be required if backend application uses other data structures or XML schemas than the e-CODEX ones.
  2. Once the national tests are completed, it is recommended to start testing with the Central Testing Platform (CTP) that provides a full e-CODEX test environment for sending and receiving test messages for EPO and ESC.
  3. After successfully completing tests with the CTP, participants should indicate their readiness to start basic connectivity tests with other participants. Once the connectivity tests are completed, participants are ready to start the end-to-end tests.
    As soon as the end-to-end tests are finalised with at least one piloting partner, testing partners can start tests with the e-Justice Portal. These tests are conducted on the same basis as tests with the piloting countries.

 

e-CODEX Access Points

Consult the List of Authorised e-CODEX Access Points

 

Contact

The eu-LISA e-CODEX team can be reached at e-CODEX [at] eulisa [dot] europa [dot] eu (e-CODEX[at]eulisa[dot]europa[dot]eu)

 

Read more about e-CODEX and eu-LISA's core activities on our Discover eu-LISA portal

Discover eu-LISA