Dóra Horváth: Introduction of The European Constitutional Communication Network (ABSz, 2023. Különszám, 4-6. o.)

In January 2021 the Hungarian Constitutional Court launched an ambitious project with the aim to encourage the use of foreign jurisprudence in constitutional adjudication by setting up an English-language database of European constitutional court decisions. The European Constitutional Communication Network, ECCN in short, stands for both an online database as well as an international collaboration of eight European constitutional courts, dedicated to contribute to the European transjudicial dialogue.

The consideration or application of foreign case-law in the decision-making of constitutional courts is used to enlarge the discussion with a broader range of arguments in order to reach a detailed and well-based decision. The relevance of the practice of foreign constitutional courts before a domestic constitutional court rests on two pillars: on the one hand, the similarity of the issues, challenges the courts face, and on the other hand, the similarity of constitutional values and approach to fundamental rights stemming from a shared cultural heritage. In Europe, especially in Central-Eastern Europe, the constitutional courts face an increasing number of challenges that are European or global in nature. Challenges, such as pandemics, war, economic crisis, migration, or the more prolonged threat of climate change raise several unprecedented questions of constitutional law relevance. In such cases constitutional courts can benefit from looking abroad to see how other States have responded to similar problems. ECCN was grounded on the premises that the diversity in national approaches to global problems shall be appreciated, given that these constitutional systems are all founded on similar constitutional values of the rule of law, democracy, and the protection of human rights. The mission of ECCN is to make European constitutional case-law transparent and accessible, so that through the mutual exchange of decisions the European community would be provided with collective wisdom, from which all can benefit.

In order for ECCN to effectively contribute to the strengthening of this exchange of decisions, challenges arising on a technical level had to be defined too. With regard to the use of foreign legal materials, among several practical difficulties one major obstacle stands out, that is, language barriers. The consideration of foreign case-law by constitutional courts is often influenced by the language of the original decision or the availability of a translation. ECCN aims to eliminate this barrier by making English language translations and abstracts of European constitutional court decisions and sharing them in an online database with other constitutional courts.

The website database (eccn.hu) became operational in July 2022 with around 400 English translations and abstracts of constitutional court decisions from seven constitutional jurisdictions made by a working-group of lawyers with a multi-lingual profile, assigned to the ECCN project by the Constitutional Court of Hungary. The database was presented in November 2022 to representatives of six European constitutional courts in the course of an international workshop in Budapest. Seven countries (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria) offered their active contribution to the project, in return for access to the database. With assistance from these constitutional courts also the ECCN working group continues to expand the number of translations including new constitutional jurisdictions as well. Today the ECCN database has around 800 translations from fourteen constitutional jurisdictions [Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, the United States, and the Republic of Korea (South Korea)]. In February 2023 under the supervision of the Constitutional Court of Hungary another working-group has been established at the National University of Public Service for the realization of the plan to include in the ECCN database English-language articles of comparative constitutional law subject, with the aim to connect constitutional court decisions with legal literature within the ECCN database.

The database itself is designed to meet the need of a user-friendly interface with a practical search system. Researchers can get to the most relevant results by selecting one, more or a combination of keywords, date of decision, case number, and other relevant filters. To further compliment research, the decisions are connected to other decisions they are related to from a constitutional point of view, as well as to relevant studies and articles to provide researchers with further context.

In the course of the implementation of the ECCN project it was essential to find a way to maintain both efficiency and quality, that is, efficiency of the workflow and quality of the outcome. ECCN has always

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been persistent in pursuing both objectives without prioritizing one on the expense of the other. To speed up the translation process ECCN relies on AI technology using a self-learning program to make English translations. At the same time, content-making in ECCN has a set of guarantees to ensure the quality of its content. For this purpose, each translation is proof-read by a professional legal language editor that reads the translation together with the original text, checking not only for linguistic mistakes but for possible factual errors, or distortions as well. ECCN also aims to collect and upload to the database or reference the already available English translations of constitutional courts.