The MATRA-SENTER-ASSER Instituut Project
On the basis of the Memorandum signed by Romania and The Kingdom of Netherlands in 1999, the Dutch government carries out assistance projects in order to help candidate countries to meet EU joining criteria and to implement the "acquis communautaire." It is the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs that deals with the MATRA pre-joining program granting policy. Along with EU joining support, the MATRA programs also aim to create long lasting bonds between Dutch public institutions and the receiver states. The SENTER Internationaal governmental agency, as executive agency, had the task of implementing these programs.
In the context of the above-mentioned regulations, SENTER Internationaal indentified in Romania the project called: Accessibility and use of legal information at Romania's High Court of Cassation and Justice. In order to draft the project in detail and to implement it, SENTER Internationaal also called on the help of specialists at the TMC ASSER Instituut, an International Law Institute in The Hague.
We add that TMC ASSER Instituut was founded in 1965 by the Dutch Universities that taught international law, in order to support legal studies and research in the following legal matters: international private law, international public law, international organizations law, international commercial arbitration, European Union law. On an international level, the institute organizes legal reform support programs in the Central and East-European countries; on an academic level, the institute supports legal research. The institute operates in three fields: research, education and documentation.
The project's general objective is to ensure at the Supreme Court access to legal European and international publications, in order to improve the quality of the legal activity.
The Accessibility and use of legal information at Romania's High Court of Cassation and Justice Project aims to fulfill the following objectives:
1. Founding at the Supreme Court an Information and Documentation Center concerning EU and international law; the Center should be accessible and efficient, and should also be used by other institutions involved in the jurisdictional activity. The Center is equipped with:
- foreign books on EU law, approximately 300 volumes; providing CD's with legal encyclopedias and legal dictionaries,
- a network of 22 computers and 1 server, which ensure access to bibliographic material and on-line access to EU legal resources,
- the TINLIB program - specialized in the electronic organization, recording and management of the reference material and in training the staff of the Center,
- designing the website of the Court so that it contains web pages referring to the Center,
- printers, photocopying machine, bar code scanners, office automation, and specially designed furniture for daily activity in the Center.
2. Equipping the Center with an internet access server and creating the first website of the Supreme Court aimed to:
- provide general information on the jurisdiction, attributions and structure of the Court;
- post press releases,
- enable access to the Court's jurisprudence,
- provide standard samples of various types of requests,
- give the possibility to check court hearing lists,
- give the possibility to read the short version of the supreme court decision,
all this on-line, without having to go to the court in person.
3. Equipping the Supreme Court with an applications server and implementing the electronic infrastructure and the local network of the Supreme Court of Justice, to enable the electronic management of cases and of the Supreme Court documents within the first version of the ECRIS electronic system (Electronic Court Register Information System).
4. Training the technical specialized staff for the management of the local network.
The implementation phase of the MATRA-SENTER-ASSER Instituut program ended on 31 December 2001.
Photographs from the inauguration of the EU Law Information and Documentation Center