Serbia has excellent cooperation with the CEPEJ, follows its recommendations and guidelines and takes them into account when drafting key laws for the judiciary – this was noted by Justice Minister Nela Kuburović at the presentation of the 2018 European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) report on the efficiency and quality of justice in the European judicial systems.
The Minister stated that CEPEJ recommendations had been of particular relevance and importance in the course of drafting the 2015 Enforcement and Security Act adding that this body’s guidelines would also be taken into account in the current process of amending the above Act.
“The CEPEJ suggestions which the Ministry of Justice has also taken into account concern the position and role of expert witnesses in judicial proceedings, and perhaps most relevant to our current efforts – those of the Ministry of Justice, Supreme Court of Cassation and EU Delegation – are the guidelines on improving judicial statistics,” said Kuburović.
The Minister pointed out that CEPEJ guidelines were particularly relevant to the development of new strategic and legislative frameworks for alternative dispute resolution, stressing that a new mediation law should strike a balance between the number of court proceedings and the number of mediations so as to improve both the business environment and the efficiency of the judiciary in the citizens’ interests.
The Minister also mentioned that Serbia was introducing the Judicial Information System and implementing the Central Statistical Reporting Project.
“The plan for Serbia is to introduce and develop judicial information and statistical reporting systems in accordance with the CEPEJ guidelines in order to, inter alia, facilitate measuring the average length of court proceedings,” Minister Kuburović explained.
According to her, the Central Statistical Reporting project, which is being implemented jointly by the Ministry of Justice, Supreme Court of Cassation and High Judicial Council, allows to create reports on the work of general jurisdiction courts ‘at the click of a mouse’, while by the end of the year the system will be able to provide reports on the work of judges, triggering ‘alerts’ if statutory procedural time limits are exceeded.
She also recalled that reports on the inflow and processing of cases and the status of old cases are updated on a daily basis and available to citizens on the Portal of Courts, Justice Ministry website and National Open Data Portal.
Kuburović indicated that in the past two years the Ministry of Justice had put considerable effort into improving electronic data exchange i.e. into the Judicial Information System (JIS).
“More than a million e-queries have been exchanged through the JIS, which have replaced at least two million letters of correspondence and saved over 220 million dinars, all costs of traditional data exchange included. Currently, sixteen government-run and judicial databases can be electronically accessed by courts,” Kuburović revealed.
The JIS is estimated to be able to accelerate court proceedings by three to six months. The Minister offered the example of the Basic Court in Novi Sad, where, using this platform, 40% fewer judges assigned to handle enforcement cases cleared nearly one third of such cases.
Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia Sem Fabrizi said that judicial reforms were a key requirement for Serbia’s joining the European Union, as well as for delivering good governance and creating a stronger economy, to the benefit of the country and its citizens.
“This report shows that Serbia has made progress in resolving a number of issues concerning the rule of law, especially in the judicial system. The EU is set to continue its support to Serbia in making further progress,” Fabrizi confirmed.
Former CEPEJ President and current Head of Department at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Constitutional Affairs, Reforms, Deregulation and Justice Georg Stawa emphasised the importance of data collected for the CEPEJ report.
“Anyone can use, can read this data; so if someone in Washington, at the World Bank, is considering granting loans and approving programmes, or if someone at the IMF wants to find out something about the judiciary, they can read this data and make relevant decisions. That is the reason why it’s very important to have quality data,” Stawa explained.
President of the Supreme Court of Cassation Dragomir Milojević also spoke at the presentation of the report, organised by the Ministry of Justice with the help from the IPA 2015 “EU for Justice – Support to Chapter 23” project and in cooperation with the CEPEJ.
The CEPEJ is a Council of Europe special body made up of representatives of all 47 CoE member states, its main task being to define concrete ways to improve the functioning of the judicial systems and to promote effective implementation of CoE principles, recommendations and legal instruments.