CMS Expert Guide to Digital Litigation in Romania

The digitalisation process in Romania is still in the beginning stages after its launch in response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. To summarise, the main progress towards digitalisation of the Romanian legal system includes: intensive use of electronic signatures, submission of applications to the courts in electronic format with the use of electronic signatures and the study of court records scheduled online.

According to the European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) 2022, which tracks digital progress in the EU, Romania has a score of 30.6 points, which puts it behind all other EU member states. The EU average is 52.3 points. 

For several years, information (e.g. parties names, subject matter, hearing dates, dispositive part of decisions, existence of appeals) on all pending cases in Romanian courts is publicly available online.

More recently, courts began to communicate all of their decisions to a centralised online database. These decisions became freely available to the public after anonymisation.

The conduct of a hearing entirely by videoconference is an absolute exception in the Romanian courts and was happening mostly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Courts currently use videoconferencing mainly for hearing witnesses or when parties, for serious reasons, cannot attend in person. Criminal law courts are typically more prone to using videoconference facilities.

Also, within the past years, several courts implemented an electronic file system, which is used for parties to obtain easier access to information in court case files. This is not a centralised effort, as the system was developed by IT specialists employed by the courts independently and not by the Ministry of Justice. Therefore, access to this type of system is not consistent (only some courts use it) and several types of systems are employed by courts around the country. While the courts provide access to case files for the benefit of the parties, judges and courts continue to use hard-copy documents as official records.

Courts have also embraced, and started to use on a large scale, email communications that is slowly replacing postal communication, which is still the standard. Submissions of court claims is currently possible by email in all courts despite some initial uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic when email was predominantly used.

The use of digital tools or measures is not mandatory in litigation in Romania. However, when granting access to the electronic file system, some courts “force” parties to accept communications through the same system. Also, where the electronic file system is available, there is a growing expectation from the judges that the counsels and parties use it and are fully aware of any submission made between the hearings.

Romania does not have a fully digitalised litigation process in place. While some progress was made in relation to the use of the digital tools or measures, most of the system remains connected to the hard-copy versions of case files or to the actual presence of counsel or a party in court.

For example, while courts generally accept submissions by email and more courts have the electronic file system in place, all courts in Romania print such submissions and store them in physical archives, regardless of whether the documents are accessible in the electronic file system. Romanian judges would in all cases have a physical file on the table during hearings and no judge would access the documents on a computer.

Also, not all courts have electronic file systems and there is no requirement for them to develop or use one in the future. For the smaller courts, most submissions would still be made in hard copy by counsels, even if communication by email is accepted and encouraged.

Nearly all hearings are held with the physical presence of counsels and/or parties. A hearing by videoconference is an exception, and is usually used only for such parties or witnesses that, for a well-grounded reason, are not able to participate in person.

Besides the above-mentioned laws and regulations, there are no specific rules in place that specifically address the use of technology in litigation. 

In October 2022, the Ministry of Justice approved for funding the first project related to "Digital Transformation", where an investment of RON 121.6 million is planned.

The project implemented by the Ministry of Justice is the first major post-pandemic intervention for the modernisation of the IT&C infrastructure of the judicial system.

It aims to ensure the adequate processing and storage capacity of courts, as well as implementation, including through a technological upgrade of the local and central IT&C infrastructure, a single version of the electronic file to be known as the National Electronic File.
Thus, with this funding, network equipment for data communications and security, as well as processing and storage equipment, will be purchased and distributed to courts and to the Ministry of Justice. This equipment will host various systems and applications, including the current version of the court case management system.

The project aims at achieving an " operational virtualisation and centralisation of applications" by 30 June 2023.

There are currently no rules in place that specifically address the use of AI in litigation.

Most of the electronic access to court case data is allowed based on evidence identity of the applicant as being a participant in the court case or attesting representation rights by counsel for the parties standing in the trial. Electronic security measures predominantly include two-factor authentication, but there are still courts that grant access to court case data based on a simple password listed on the subpoenas received by parties. As with the type of applications used, the level of security still varies from court to court.

Given the limited use of digital tools by the Romanian judicial system and Romanian lawyers, we have not seen a risk for businesses or examples of large numbers of claimants. In cases where the numbers were significant, AI/automated processes/tools were not used.

In addition to the measures mentioned in Question 6 above, we are not aware of any planned or existing tools or processes aimed at improving accessibility to legal services.

Regarding general access to justice, the Romanian Ministry of Justice has provided and maintained for the last several years a publicly available website containing all the pending cases in all Romanian courts. Also, more recently, the Ministry has made available a free public database containing all court decisions issued by all Romanian courts after 2016 and a full free online database of Romanian legislation.