On 5 April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights launched the Romanian-language user interface of its case-law database HUDOC, containing the Court’s case-law in its two official languages, English and French, as well as in 34 other non-official languages.
Hosted by the National Institute of Magistracy (INM), the conference announcing the launch of the Romanian-language user interface of the HUDOC database brought together, in-person and online, more than 100 persons from Romania, Moldova and Strasbourg.
Romanian is the tenth language in which the HUDOC database is available, alongside the versions in English, French, Armenian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.
The user interface of HUDOC was translated by the Translation Coordination Unit of the European Institute of Romania (EIR), based on a Memorandum of Agreement on the development of the Romanian HUDOC user interface, signed with the European Court of Human Rights in 2023. In the same year, EIR joined the TJENI project, which supported this process both by facilitating the translation of the HUDOC interface and the relevant ECHR case-law into Romanian.
The TJENI project (Foster Transparency of Judicial Decisions and Enhancing the National Implementation of the ECHR), funded by the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Regional Cooperation, has been implemented by the Council of Europe. The TJENI project, in which the Superior Council of Magistracy (CSM) also took part, aimed to improve the transparency and consistency of national court rulings and to share as up-to-date information as possible on human rights issues. The accessibility of the case-law in local languages is a key issue in the effort to better identify human rights issues at national level.
By translating the key ECHR case-law and the HUDOC interface into Romanian, EIR contributes to the implementation of Recommendation CM/Rec(2021)4 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on the publication and dissemination of the European Convention on Human Rights, the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights and other relevant texts.
The event was covered on several websites, including those of the European Court of Human Rights, the Council of Europe, the Superior Council of Magistracy, the National Institute of Magistracy, Mediafax, as well as on other specialised websites.