The government approved and sent the bill to the Riigikogu The unicameral parliament of Estonia. , which provides for the transition to a paperless procedure in civil and administrative cases, but at the same time the possibility of communicating with the court on paper remains.
Until now the court file has been kept in parallel both on paper and digitally, in the future only the digital file will have legal meaning, and paper files will no longer be prepared.
According to the Minister of Justice, Lea Danilson-Järg, the transition to a digital file will speed up the court process and make it more convenient for all parties in the proceedings.
In all civil and administrative cases, the documents and other data of the court proceedings are already fully available in digital form, and the party to the proceedings can consult the case related to him via the public e-file. At the same time, in courts, the file is often considered printed on paper in addition to the digital one. For example, the file prepared by the county court may be digital, but the proceedings in the district court continue on paper.
"The work arrangement, where the court file is kept parallel digitally and on paper, causes confusion among the participants in the proceedings and is not reasonable considering modern possibilities. The main goal of the bill is to end the parallel keeping of digital and paper files in order to create clarity for the party to the proceedings, make the procedure faster and more convenient, and reduce the administrative, personnel-transportation and paper costs associated with keeping a paper file," said Minister of Justice Danilson-Järg. He added that the important advantage of the digital file over the paper file is also the fact that all the parties to the proceedings and the courts can consult the file at the same time.
"The digitization of court proceedings and the transition to a digital file in civil and administrative cases is an important step in the development of Estonia's e-state, which was preceded by a long and thorough preparatory work. Courts have been preparing for the transition to a paperless procedure since 2017 - relevant software has been developed and new work processes have been practiced," said the Minister of Justice.
"If paper documents arrive, which happens less and less often, they are digitized and added to the digital file of the court information system," the minister noted.
In addition to the digitization of court proceedings in civil and administrative cases, the government plans to digitize criminal and misdemeanor proceedings in the future. "There is already a draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code in the Riigikogu The unicameral parliament of Estonia. 's proceedings, which creates a legal basis for the digital procedure of criminal cases. At the Ministry of Justice, we have set ourselves the goal of digitizing the entire criminal justice system by 2026 at the latest. We will start the transition to digital proceedings from simple proceedings in criminal cases, after which we will move on to other types of proceedings with digitalization," explained Danilson-Järg.
The digital development of the Estonian judicial system has attracted attention and has been noted internationally. In a study conducted by the Nordic Council of Ministers this year, Estonia was named a pioneer in the field of digitalization of courts. According to a newly published comparative study by the Council of Europe, the digitization index of the Estonian judicial system is 9.79 on a ten-point scale, i.e. close to the maximum.
In 2019, approximately 27 percent of civil and administrative cases were processed without a paper file, and in 2020, approximately 38 percent of all procedures registered in the court information system. Last year, the use of the digital file had risen to 53 percent in civil cases and 63 percent in administrative cases.