Justitia 4.0 – the pros and cons of digital court proceedings and notarial records in Italy

According to the EU digital agenda, many measures have been taken in Italy to digitalise civil and criminal proceedings. In this respect, the most important investments concerned the computerisation of the justice of the peace courts and the office for service, enforcement and protests. Above all, the pandemic has contributed to the fact that digital court proceedings are increasingly being conducted with oral hearings on MS Teams so that the already existing regulations in this regard have applied.

Since 2010, there has also been the possibility of carrying out digital notarial records. On the one hand, this allows the specialists, e.g. to determine autonomous mortgage enquiries as well as cadastral surveys; on the other hand, the public administration is able to update the database thanks to security systems such as the digital signature and thus make digital entries in the commercial register.

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the instruments already available for carrying out digital court proceedings were also transferred into practice. While the electronic submission of files has already prevailed, digital court proceedings are something new so their regulation is still incomplete. Nevertheless, videoconferences have now practically established themselves as standard.

The digital court proceedings are carried out with Teams, creating a virtual meeting room. The judge must communicate the date and time of the hearing to the parties within a reasonable period, as well as the link to the virtual room. The legal matter will be heard after the connection has been established and the identity of the parties has been proven. In this respect, however, it must be noted that the regulation of essential legal institutions such as witness questioning is still missing. In contrast, the question of the presence of the parties does not arise under Italian procedural law.

In Italy, we have already participated in several digital court hearings: the practical handling is very simple - a few days before, the party representatives declare their consent and indicate the email address to be used for the access link; Microsoft Teams is used as a platform. At the specified time, the virtual conference room will be unlocked and, after an explicit reference to the prohibition, the hearing will then proceed completely “normally”. The minutes of the hearing are then provided with a digital signature on the usual digital channels, i.e. sent by certified email and via the electronic court file. The experience with meetings in videoconferences has triggered a debate nationwide about a fundamental reform of the civil proceedings and in particular about the pros and cons of various meetings in order to achieve greater procedural efficiency.

Autor: Florian Bünger