Commission makes justice decisions more accessible to citizens, businesses and law professionals

As part of continuous efforts to make justice more accessible, the European Commission has today launched a new case law search engine on the European e-Justice Portal. Since 2010, this Portal guides citizens, businesses and law professionals through justice procedures both at EU and national level. For instance, the portal helps them find a lawyer or understand how they can access to courts in any Member State. The European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) search engine will now allow citizens, businesses, legal practitioners and academics to find information on case law published by national and international courts and tribunals more easily. By having easy access to previous cases, they will be able to see how similar situations were treated on previous occasions and use this information for their own cases. The search engine provides access to around 4 million case law decisions from the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Patent Office, and 7 Member States: France, Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Germany, the Czech Republic and Finland. The search engine is available in all official EU languages except Irish and users will be able to search by keywords, country, court and date of decision among other things. More information on the European Case Law Identifier search engine is available online.