Minister Malenica: By 2025, judiciary must become faster, more efficient and digitalised, with underlying goal to restore public trust

At the conference marking the European Day of Justice, Minister of Justice and Public Administration Ivan Malenica presented the plan for the judiciary until 2025, which is focused on citizens and restoring their trust in the system.

In his opening speech, Minister Malenica highlighted that the reform of the justice system is often mentioned in the public, but without elaborating on the content and specific measures of the reform process. 

“We have decided to present to citizens and professional public the specific legislative, organisational and development activities to be implemented in the coming years. It’s a set of activities aimed at faster and more efficient court proceedings, digitalisation of processes and modernisation of infrastructure. The ultimate goal of everyone in the system must be to restore citizens’ trust in the justice system”, said Minister Malenica, emphasizing the significant financial resources earmarked for this purpose. HRK 750 million has been secured under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan for investments and reform processes in the judiciary and for the fight against corruption, to raise the level of efficiency of the justice system and public trust. Additional funds will be secured through the Multiannual Financial Framework, loans and grants, as well as from the state budget. 

Certain improvements are already visible in the system, such as the reduction of the backlog of cases older than 7 years by 21% and of cases approaching the statute of limitations by 45%, all this within six months of implementing Action Plans for the improvement of efficiency in municipal and county courts, pointed out Minister Malenica, adding that comprehensive data on the results of the action plans would be published late this year. 

Concrete legislative activities are underway in the justice system, including amendments in the areas of anti-corruption, enforcement and insolvency proceedings, courts, State Attorney’s Office and companies, which will contribute to realising the vision of fast, efficient and digital justice. An important novelty concerns the introduction of security checks of judicial officials every five years, a specific step towards ensuring greater confidence in the system. Another contribution to this is the obligation of all judicial officials to submit asset declarations, which have been made public starting this year, and the new Act on the Prevention of Conflict of Interest will include the obligation for additional 1000 officials to submit asset declarations. Furthermore, family departments will be established in 15 municipal courts, lifelong education of judges defined, sworn court experts and interpreters will be more deeply integrated in the system, and amendments to insolvency legislation lead to professionalization of the work of insolvency trustees. Moreover, there are investments in the area of digitalisation and infrastructure. 

“We have invested 200 million Kuna in digitalisation of the system so far, currently there are 79,412 users of the eCommunication system, and the eFiling system has been upgraded. In the area of infrastructure, we have invested over 560 million Kuna in the reconstruction and refurbishment of courts across the country, and the investment into setting up the Justice Square in Zagreb is especially important, as it will ensure simpler and faster access of citizens to the courts”, underlined Malenica, specifying a number of planned activities. 

The activities planned in the justice area until 2025 include the alignment of cadastre and land registers, adoption of the National Plan for Development of the Judiciary 2021-2027, and a number of amendments in civil and criminal procedures. The amendments will include shorter deadlines for individual procedural stages, reinforcement of the use of remote hearings, and sound recording of court hearings. In addition, further investments are planned for trainings, infrastructure and digitalisation.  All the current and planned activities are aimed at realising the vision of a faster, more efficient and digitalised judiciary that citizens rely on. 

The conference included a roundtable discussion on “Judiciary and the Public” by representatives of the media and judicial bodies:   Spokesman of the High Criminal Court Marijan Bitanga, Spokeswoman of the Municipal Civil Court in Zagreb Janja Marijan Žabek, Deputy Director of USKOK Nataša Đurović, and journalists Marinko Jurasić, Ivanka Toma and Ana Raić Knežević. Ms Ivana Ivanda Rožić acted as moderator. 

The focus of the discussion was on the importance of timely provision of public interest information, while taking into account the rules of judicial procedure and data sensitivity as well as the protection of the rights and identities of the persons involved. 

The final part of the conference was the presentation of the project “Reconstruction of the Municipal Court building in Split and promotion of e-services", worth over 74.6 million HRK, which is funded from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism. 

The project comprises three components: reconstruction of the Municipal Court building in Split, analysis and promotion of electronic services in the judiciary, and secondments of Croatian judges at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Judge Daniela Pivčević delivered a presentation of her work experience at the ECHR, where she was on secondment from January to December 2020.

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