On this page you will find questions that appeared most frequently during the last evaluation cycle in respect of comprehension of the questionnaire, application of CEPEJ methodology or use of the data entry tool CEPEJ COLLECT. You can contact secretariat by filling up the form below. The most relevant questions for all countries will be published regularly.
Frequently asked questions by National Correspondents
How to save data in the online questionnaire ?
Please click on “Save in pending” while you work in the sections. In order to avoid losing data, it is important to save data as frequent as possible (every few minutes) as there is a risk that system might lose them due to technical reasons. Only when a section is fully completed click “Save and publish”. Please note that once you click “Save and publish” the system will block any possibilities of editing that section from your end and give a permission to the CEPEJ Secretariat to proceed with the quality check of the data submitted.
What is the difference between NAP, NA and 0 reply ?
The tree replies mean the following:
NAP – the question asks about something that doesn’t exist in your national system (not applicable)
NA – the question asks about something that exists in your national system but you don’t have the data about it (not available)
0 – the question asks about something that exists in your national system and you have the data about it but it appeared 0 (zero) times in the reference year (e.g. disciplinary proceedings against judges exist in the national system but no judge was subjected to it in the reference year)
What should be entered into general and specific comments?
General comment – information that are general and always applicable irrespective of the year in which you are responding (for example, Q6: “Budget for courts and budget for public prosecution services cannot be separated so the data cannot be provided”).
Specific comment – only explains the data or developments in the reference year (for example, Q6: “The important increase in the budget allocated to the functioning of all courts in 2022 stems from the construction of a new building for the Court of cassation”).
Please be reminded that all the comments will be used for the analyses appearing in the CEPEJ Report and will all be published in the publicly available online database CEPEJ-STAT.
Why there is the pre-entered text in the general comment?
Considering that general comments should be always applicable, the assumption is that they will not change in every cycle. This is why they are automatically copied from your previous questionnaire. Please check the copied text and edit if there was some significant change in the system or you would like to complete the information. If there is no need to edit, just save them as they are.
What discrepancies should be explained?
Please compare your current reply with the reply from previous cycle.
If your selected replies are different (e.g. the reply changed from No to Yes) this discrepancy will be indicated with the exclamation mark (!) next to the answer. Such discrepancies have to be explained in the comment box below in order for reply to be accepted.
For numeric values, please provide an explanation whenever the numbers in this cycle are significantly different compared to the last cycle. In most of the cases, the significant numeric discrepancies will automatically be signalized with red colour.
Should the trainees be included in the number of non-judge and non-prosecutor staff (questions 52, 52-1 and 60)?
Generally, trainees should not be counted in the number of non-judge staff (questions 52 and 52-1) and non-prosecutor staff (question 60). The only acceptable exceptions are systems where trainees perform significant amount of work and their full time equivalents can be calculated. In that case, the comment should indicate that trainees are included in the replies because they perform significant amount of work and specify the category of staff in which they are included as well as tasks which they usually perform.
What is the coverage of the category “civil” cases in ICT part of the questionnaire ? Does it include only civil and commercial litigious or also civil and commercial non litigious (cf. Q 91)? What about the category “other” cases? Where to mention them in ICT questions?
Option 1:
The category “civil” in the ICT questions includes only “civil and commercial litigious” cases. In order to ensure comparable data for all countries, CEPEJ has decided to measure ICT use only for litigious court cases. Non-litigious cases in respect of ICT will introduce a big difference between different European countries that have many non-litigious cases/procedures compared to those that do not and where these non-litigious cases and respective software are handled by institutions outside courts.
Contrary to Q91 and for the same reason, the category “other” is not included in the coverage of the ICT questions. In case in your country there are significant number of non-litigious cases supported by ICT applications you can add the information in the comment of the relevant question/s.
If you consider that these applications are important to be mentioned you can also report in Q062-38 under other relevant applications.