I wish all our member Councils and Observers a very happy New Year.  2016 promises to be an exciting year for the ENCJ.  I am confident that our project teams will produce some ground breaking reports on the quality of justice, the financing of justice systems, and the role of non-judicial representatives in judicial governance.  We are also about to embark on two joint projects with each of the European Law Institute and the European Judicial Training Network.  With ELI, we will be looking at the proper limits of ADR systems in relation to the domain for the judge; and with the EJTN, we will be devising programmes to train judges and court presidents in the standards, guidelines and best practices established by the ENCJ.There will be challenges too in 2016.  

Our work with the European Commission in supporting the Justice Scoreboard is reaching a critical stage, where we will be trying to produce input on the indicators of the quality of justice systems – of course, we shall be looking at the matter from a judicial standpoint, but even that is not an easy task.  Also in the last year, we have received more requests for co-operation than ever before.  The nature of the problems identified shows what challenging times are facing Councils for the Judiciary across the EU and in candidate and potential candidate states.  

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all those of you who do so much hard work for the ENCJ.  I am convinced that the ENCJ is becoming more influential in European judicial affairs with every year that passes.  That is very much down to your efforts and to those of our assiduous Executive Board Members and the staff in the ENCJ office.Let’s hope that 2016 will be a hugely successful year for the ENCJ and all its member Councils and Observers.

With my personal best wishes,

Geoffrey Vos
President of the ENCJ