11/06/2015 - 12/06/2015
Bucharest - Following a training session for liaison officers on CODICES and the Venice Forum, the 14th meeting of the Joint Council on Constitutional Justice was opened by the President of the Constitutional Court of Romania, Mr Zegrean, the host of the meeting, which was organised in an excellent manner by his Court.
The two Co-Presidents of the Joint Council, Justice Kang, Republic of Korea, and Ms Kovac, Hungary, chaired the meeting and the ensuing mini-conference on “Blasphemy and other limitations to the freedom of expression”.
The Joint Council on Constitutional Justice:
1. approved the request from the Presidency of the Conference of European Constitutional Courts to prepare a working document and a special Bulletin on the topic yet to be decided at the preparatory meeting of the Conference in September 2015;
2. approved revised Guidelines for Contributions to the Bulletin on Constitutional Case-Law and CODICES;
3. approved the revised Guidelines for the “Classic” Venice Forum;
4. invited interested liaison officers to register for weekly mailings on the Constitutional Justice Media Observatory;
5. took note of the new User’s Guide to the Venice Forum;
6. was informed on the publication of the Bulletin on Constitutional Case-Law;
7. was informed on the work of the Venice Commission in general and in particular its opinions and activities in the field of constitutional justice;
8. was informed on co-operation with regional and linguistic groups;
9. was informed that the Bureau of the World Conference on Constitutional Justice had decided that the 4th Congress of the World Conference would take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, probably in the period between 10 and 15 September 2017;
10. was informed that the Secretariat was preparing a new CODICES database and that it had received proposals on improvements for the new database from liaison officers;
11. took note that the next meetings of the Joint Council on Constitutional Justice are to take place in Venice in June 2016 and, upon the kind invitation of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, in Karlsruhe in 2017.