Revista da EMERJ - V. 21 - N. 2 - Maio/Agosto - 2019

 R. EMERJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 21, n. 2, p. 11-39, Maio-Agosto, 2019  26 board, published yearly (since 2013) by the European Commission. 66 According to its presentation, “the EU Justice Scoreboard is an infor- mation tool aiming to assist the EU and Member States to achieve more effective justice by providing objective, reliable and comparable data on the quality, independence and efficiency of justice systems in all Mem- ber States”. As to the efficiency of the justice systems, the EU Justice Scoreboard uses a number of indicators: the length of proceedings, the clear- ance rate and the number of pending cases. The length of proceedings expresses the time (in days) taken by the court to reach a decision at first instance in ordinary proceedings. According to the European Com- mission, “the efficiency of a judicial system should already be reflected at first instance, as the first instance is an obligatory step for everyone going to court”. By saying that the EU Justice Scoreboard is not right as far as civil procedure in Italy is concerned. Ordinary proceedings are not the key instrument for ensuring judicial protection of rights in Italy any longer. In fact, over the last decades, they are becoming less and less important, even residual, to that end. In order to take a correct view of the real state of affairs in Italy, one should take into consideration a large number of “special” proceedings (to use the Italian procedural Jargon), which normally enable claimants to obtain effective and efficient judicial protection of rights in a wide range of situations. As of 2013, the number of cases brought to court by way of special proceedings (especially payment orders and provisional measures) was substantially higher than the number of ordinary proceedings. 67 At the stage, it is worth taking stock of a few statistical data con- cerning the number of judges, the number of civil cases in the courts of first and second instance, the numbers of lawyers, and the litigation rates in Italy, expanding the data base of the EU Justice scoreboard, if necessary. 66 The Scoreboard uses different sources of information. Most of the quantitative data are currently provided by the CEPEJ , Report on European Judicial Systems, but the EU Commission draws upon additional sources of information, e.g., Eurostat, World Bank, World Economic Forum, and the European judicial networks. 67 Ministero della giustizia, Piano della performance 2015–2017, p. 15; R. Caponi , A Masterpiece at a Glance; Piero Cala- mandrei , Introduzione allo Studio Sistematico dei Provvedimenti Cautelari, in L. Cadiet, B. Hess, M. Requejo Isidro (eds.), Procedural Science at the Crossroads of Different Generations, Studies of the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law, Nomos, 2015, p. 373–380.