Measuring Justice? The EU Justice Scoreboard in the Light of the Performance-Based Approach

The EU Justice Scoreboard (EUJS) is a soft law instrument part of the EU’s Rule of Law toolbox and essentially provides an annual overview of indicators on the performance of national judicial systems (focus on independence, efficiency and quality). Through the EUJS, the EU pursues access to an effective justice system as a fundamental right, lying at the very foundation of European democracies and enshrined in the constitutional traditions common to the Member States, in line with the principle of the rule of law. This tool, created in 2013, is linked both to the RoL policy and to the European Semester, as it was felt that an efficient judiciary could serve as an instrument to ensure the economic recovery and competitiveness of Member States. However, the idea of measuring the judicial systems of Member States has shaped criticism both in institutional and academic contexts. The presence of two pillars in the EU Justice Scoreboard is, therefore, a major part of the criticism directed towards the instrument. The paper describes the tool, giving an account of its genesis and main characteristics, and then analyses it in the context of its implementation. Finally, it attempts to analyse criticism that followed this instrument, trying to classify this on two axes of coordinates: time and type of contestation.