Professor Gilles Cuniberti was invited to write an In Depth Analysis for the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI Committee) of the European Parliament and to present his conclusions and recommendations in a workshop together with five other European experts which took place at the European Parliament in Brussels on June 17^th , 2015.

The theme of the workshop was Civil Judicial Expertise in the European Union.

The principle of free movement of goods, persons and services has led to the development of intra-EU exchanges and consequently - inevitably - to an increase in cross-border disputes. In such a context, judicial experts or expert witnesses tend to work more and more in other Member States than the one in which they are established. Despite the emergence of judicial cooperation in civil matters making it easier to handle cross border situations in the judicial area, judicial technical expertise is still regulated differently in the Member States, with a clear separation between Member States with a common law system and those with a romano-germanic legal system.

Practical and legal problems can arise when experts are used to conduct their expertise differently according to their Member State's legislation, including problems relating to procedural aspects (selection of experts, determination of fees, status of the experts, etc.). The question of the approximation of the rules concerning expertise and the relevance of other solutions such as the introduction of an EU list of judicial experts or the creation of a specific status of expert generally recognised in the EU is raised.

In order to better understand the differences between the main legal systems existing in the EU and to help identify the difficulties in cross-border situations and possible ways of addressing them, the Workshop aims at facilitating an exchange of views among Members of the European Parliament and legal professionals, on the basis of the contributions of eminent experts, be they academics or practitioners, bringing issues to the fore.

In this framework, Professor Cuniberti was invited to provide an overview of the existing EU legislation, which could be applied to cross-border civil judicial expertise, to analyse whether it facilitates cross-border judicial expertise, and finally to provide a number of recommendations to the EU institutions for possible EU action aiming at facilitating cross-border judicial expertise in the EU and thus further develop a genuine European area of civil justice. His report can be downloaded here.

In the last few months, Professor Cuniberti was also involved in a project of the European Expertise and Expert Institute funded by the European Commission and aiming at producing a European Guide to Legal Expertise aiming at identifying the best practices in the field in Europe. He chaired the data study group of the project.

It is the second time Professor Cuniberti appears before the JURI Committee this year. He had previously presented his work in the context of the European Law Institute/UNIDROIT Joint Project on European Civil Procedure.