Documents: With tag Judiciary

The reforms conducted under the auspices of the EU negotiations undoubtedly transformed the judiciary accelerated the fight against corruption and improved the system for the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms. Although these reforms enabled Croatia to become a member of the EU, their results and outcomes were not entirely in line with expectations. Moreover, in the case of Croatia like in many other Central and East European EU member states, it is evident and clearly visible that after the EU conditionality had passed many of the started reforms were not finalised due to changes of political priorities or were reversed (either by changing or choosing not to implement the current policies).

Judicial decisions shall be drafted in an accessible, simple, and clear language. Judges shall issue reasoned decisions, pronounced in public within a reasonable time, based on fair and public hearing. Judges shall use appropriate case management methods. In pursuance with the ECtHR case-law, the reasoning must contain a specific and explicit reply to key importance arguments, submissions and claims, which are decisive for the outcome of the proceedings, i.e., for the adoption of the court decision. The purpose of this analysis is to contribute to improving the quality of court decisions in the civil cases, to improve the procedure itself, as well as to contribute to improving the uniformity of decisions in order to respond to citizens’ expectations with regard to their right to a fair and just trial and access to justice.

The process of reform of the judiciary in Bulgaria is still ongoing, with no establishment of a solid and clearly defined framework for the judicial system or consensus amidst political parties, the judiciary, and the public on the concept for the development of the setup and organisation of the judicial system in sight. The role and place of the prosecution and investigation against the Prosecutor General and deputies thereof are the issues that fuel most of the debates and are a source of perpetual disagreement. The road towards the resolution of those fundamental issues spreads across the metaphorical minefield that is the legacy of prior amendments, including judgments of the Constitutional Court. The experience of Bulgaria indicates that the consensus of parliamentary parties alone is not sufficient to effect reforms as parliamentary representation tends to be too dynamic, especially in times of crises that follow one after another. A much broader agreement is required, and civil

Constitutional judiciary has been existing in Macedonia for almost six decades. The First Constitutional Court, as a separate constitutional order institution controlling constitutionality of laws and constitutionality and legality of other general legal acts, was introduced with the 1963 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. Its organizational setting, powers and working procedures for exercising its jurisdiction were regulated in detail with a special law. In accordance with its powers, the Constitutional Court exercised additional a posteriori or conditional repressive control over the constitutionality of the laws by making decisions that had the legal effect of determining unconstitutionality of a law. Where the Assembly failed to harmonize the law within 6 months, the Constitutional Court would conclude, with a new decision, that such law was abrogated.

The analysis of the quality of court decisions in misdemeanor cases written by Dr. Mariana Loncar Velkova, was made on a total of 60 decisions from four appellate areas, issued in the period from 2017 to 2020, where one of the parties in the proceedings is a natural person. The analysis was based on a set of qualitative indicators as per the Methodology for Analyzing the Quality and Uniformity of Court Decisions and it does not quantify the results obtained with the quantitative indicators according to the Methodology. Each decision was individually analyzed without being compared with the others, by applying the indicators from the mentioned Methodology.

This Shadow Report streamlines in a coherent unity all findings, conclusions and recommendations deriving from monitoring the areas covered by Chapter 23 -Judiciary and Fundamental Rights. This is the fifth Shadow Report published by the European Policy Institute-Skopje (EPI) while taking into consideration the comments and opinions of the 23 Network members. The previous four Shadow Reports cover the period from October 2014 to July 2015, then the period from July 2015 to April 2016, the period from May 2016 to January 2018 and the period from June 2018 to March 2019.