4.5.9. Digitalisation of procedures

Digitalisation initiatives for the appeal of an international protection case continued throughout 2022 on the anonymisation of court decisions, electronic submission of documents and file management.

In Austria, a project by the Federal Ministry of Justice, together with the Federal Computing Centre, received an eAward in October 2022. The project, “Use of artificial intelligence in the anonymisation of court decisions”, aims to facilitate access to a higher number of court decisions, including asylum decisions pronounced on appeal. It uses artificial intelligence to anonymise the decisions, a process usually done manually and requiring extensive human resources.523

In Belgium, CALL launched a digital tool on 1 March 2022, entitled J-BOX, to exchange procedural documents electronically instead of using registered mail. The use of the tool became mandatory in appeals for accelerated and urgent measures. The possibility to exchange documents electronically had been provided by law in 2021.524  In addition, in February 2022, CALL reminded appellants that it was not necessary to add copies of publicly-available online sources as evidence, mentioning that a link to the source was sufficient.525

In France, in 2022, the CNDA organised for the first-time teleconferenced hearings with the Administrative Court of Lyon. This practice continued with the Administrative Court of Nancy and with overseas territories.526

In Germany, the Federal Administrative Court announced that from 1 January 2026, in accordance with Section 55b(1a)(1) of the Administrative Procedure Code (VwGO), all court files must be kept electronically. The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig aims to meet this legal requirement earlier, by 1 January 2024. From 1 September 2022, the Federal Administrative Court managed all files electronically for incoming and continued proceedings of the 1st and 5th Revision Senate, providing also for the possibility that the senate could suspend the electronic file management in individual procedures if it caused an unreasonable additional effort or for other compelling reasons.527

The Swedish Migration Court of Appeal introduced an e-service to facilitate the submission of documents to the court by state administrative authorities. The e-service is an alternative to submissions by email, secure e-mail and paper mail, making it possible to submit larger files and in more formats to the courts.528

Some countries, such as Lithuania, have continued to hold court hearings remotely, despite the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions.529