The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) is strengthening the evidence base for justice reforms across Eastern Partnership countries by improving how legal aid data are collected and used. Through a regional workshop in held in Budva, Montenegro under the Justice Dashboard EaP (DEaP) project, CEPEJ supported national stakeholders in aligning their approaches to legal aid data - an essential step for ensuring the evaluation of judicial systems.
Reliable data on legal aid remain difficult to collect and compare across countries, due to differences in legal frameworks, institutional arrangements, statistical methodologies and policy choices. By addressing these gaps, the workshop helped build a shared understanding of key indicators and reporting practices, enabling countries to produce more consistent and comparable data.
Participants from Eastern Partnership countries - Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, worked on identifying best practices and developed common recommendations to improve data quality. Strengthened data systems will support the CEPEJ Evaluation cycles and help authorities make better informed decisions when creating policies and reforms related to access to justice.
A joint session with the Dashboard Western Balkans brought together legal aid representatives and correspondents from both regions to discuss legal aid budgets, case flow and methodology used for counting and reporting.
This activity is part of the European Union and the Council of Europe joint programme “Partnership for Good Governance”, co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe, and implemented by the Council of Europe, in the framework of the project “PGG III: Support for a better evaluation of the results of judicial reform efforts in the Eastern Partnership 'Justice Dashboard EaP', Phase II”.
