SCAN project has been presented at IRIS 2019 Salzburg [Full paper].

The efficiency and improvement of the judicial systems of the Member States have always represented one of the main aims of the European Union. During Eighties and Nineties European Commission started pilot projects in: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Ireland. Every Member State had its own procedure: that’s why intermediate measures were required to enable recognition and enforcement of the judgments all over the different countries.
European Commission tried to improve judicial systems’ efficiency only through national proceedings.
In 2004, the European Commission proposed to create an EU procedure on Small Claims, based on EU legal common ground, so that the verdict was immediately enforceable in every Member State. In 2007 the EU Regulation 2007/861 was finally approved, creating the European Small Claims Procedure, nevertheless its implementation was not accomplished. Indeed, the European Small Claims Procedure was not much used and it was also not well known by stakeholders, such as citizens, consumers, lawyers and judges.
In order to improve the implementation of European Small Claims Procedure, the EU Regulation 2015/2421 was enacted. It modified the EU Regulation 2007/861 and it statued a study period, until July, the 15th of 2022, until changes can be proposed to improve the procedure. SCAN Project was realized, in order to guarantee the implementation of European Small Claims Procedure. The main problem seems to be an overall lack of awareness among judges and consumers, since many courts in some Member States have never even heard about the ESCP. Therefore, consumers are rarely able to obtain accurate information on the Procedure and to get practical assistance in initiating it.
SCAN project aims to reach, first of all, lawyers and judges. Legal intermediation is required, in order that legal practitioners can explain the benefits of ESCP to their customers. However, SCAN consortium also provides wide dissemination of the procedure and the project itself to citizens, entrepreneurs and consumers That’s why SCAN website has been created, alongside with accounts on very popular and professional social media, such as Twitter and LinkedIn. SCAN website has been realized in a very direct cognitive way, in order to let everyone understand about the benefits of the procedures.
SCAN Twitter and LinkedIn account have been targeted, in order to reach legal practitioners, consumers association, European citizens interested in the theme of Small Claims, IT Law, E-Justice, Civil Law and related arguments.
This proposal is based on the studies and researches about the structural legal visualization (SLV), which was born with the works of Friedrich Lachmayer. SLV highlights the troubles in interpreting legal texts: indeed, the interpretation of law is difficult even for legal practitioners, since current legal systems are very complex. Even using legal databases, laws are contained in several documents, so that the legal practitioners consider difficult to consult all of them at the same time. Thanks to the SLV, the understanding of regulatory concepts can be made clearer. SLV may be dynamic or static, depending on whether it is more useful to display text and images in a static or dynamic way.
Furthermore, there are four methods to represent and analyze a legal domain, which are: documentation, interpretation, structural analysis, and visualization. In the SCAN project we intend to introduce a ‘point and click’ procedure based on pictograms and icons supported by pictographic explanations of the legal contents of the different stages of the procedure. The use of pictograms can represent a turning point in the perception of the usefulness and therefore in the diffusion of the ESCP.

You can download the full paper clicking here: The Small Claims Analysis Net Project