Call for Evidence on EU Digital Justice Strategy for 2025-2030
On 26 May 2025, the European Commission launched a call for evidence to support the preparation of the EU Digital Justice Strategy for 2025-2030 – DigitalJustice@2030. Anyone can contribute by logging in to an EU login account. The call is open for feedback until 23 June 2025. 
General Context
As explained on the dedicated webpage, this new strategy aims “to support and strengthen Member States’ capabilities to deploy and use digital technologies, including AI tools, in their judicial systems”. Moreover, it should propose a “set of tools (…) to improve the efficiency, resilience and quality of justice”.
It is a clear continuum of Regulation (EU) 2023/2844 on the digitalisation of judicial cooperation and access to justice in cross-border civil, commercial and criminal matters adopted in 2023. This latter instrument only tackles certain aspects of digitalisation in the context of cross-border disputes (briefly analysed here). According to the Commission, there is a need “to digitalise practices that are common to all justice systems” notably via “[common] or similar IT tools (including AI tools) and data standards”. To achieve this innovative and integrative step in judicial digitalisation new mechanisms and common frames of reference may be beneficial at EU level.
Future EC Communication
The future document will take the format of a Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. It will therefore not be a binding legislative text, but a soft law instrument containing policy guidelines that may also give rise to future toolkits or recommendations for Member States and their judicial authorities. There are two main reasons for that. First, the digitalisation of judicial systems goes beyond the Union’s competence on judicial cooperation in civil matters (which is cross-border by nature pursuant to Article 81 TFEU), as it blurs the frontier between cross-border disputes, on one side, and purely domestic cases, on the other side. Second, the deployment of digital and AI-based technologies within the Judiciary is a highly complex and sensitive process, implying new technical, ethical and legal skills as well as financial investments. However, Member States are not progressing at the same pace on these issues.
The forthcoming Communication will be drafted under the lead of DG Justice and Consumers (DG JUST) within its “A1 Unit” in charge of Digital transition and judicial training”. The text is expected to be published in the last quarter of 2025 and should be adopted together with the new Judicial Training Strategy (2025-2030).
Next Steps
The supporting document of the call for evidence provides for a list of possible workstreams with actions to be further developed:
Data on digitalisation of national justice systems and exchange of best practices: to create an overview of digitalisation practices in national justice systems, allowing meaningful exchange of best practices. Member States should be able to exploit synergies and implement existing well-functioning systems; and to aim at their interoperability – rather than each Member State developing its own national tools.
IT/AI Toolbox for Justice: to accelerate the level of digitalisation and generate cost savings for Member States, the toolbox could pool information about IT (including AI) tools at EU level.
AI in justice: to ensure the consistent application of the rules under the AI Act and help national authorities to make informed decisions on whether to use AI tools in justice, for which purpose and how. This would include identifying the opportunities related to the development and use of AI tools in the framework of judicial proceedings.
European Legal Data Space (ELDS): to ensure wide and systematic access to EU and national legislation and case-law and to promote the use of legislative and judicial data for the training and development of justice-adapted AI tools.
Digital court proceedings: to achieve fully digitalised cross-border court proceedings in civil and commercial matters. Key enablers include the use of trusted digital identities such as the European Digital Identity Wallet and the European Business Wallet, qualified signatures and seals, time stamps, e-delivery and e-archiving.
EU funding for digitalisation: several workstreams depend on access to sufficient funding at national and EU level. Availability of EU funding should be ensured under the current multiannual financial framework (MFF) and the existing financial programmes. Without prejudice to the Commission proposal and the negotiations with the co-legislators, the need for appropriate funding will be assessed for the next MFF, covering the period 2028-2034.