The President of the Bratislava III Municipal Court pointed out on the alarming state of this court
The President of the Judicial Council of the Slovak Republic Marcela Kosova is well known for her interest in the state and progress of the Slovak judiciary. During the summer, she organized a series of personal meetings with court presidents and repeatedly accepted an invitation to a meeting of the College of Presidents of Regional Courts. She asked the court presidents to contact her at any time in case of more specific problems that were not identified in detail during these meetings.
And so today she met with the President of the Bratislava III Municipal Court Zuzana Moťovská Dobošová at the official seat of the Judicial Council. The reason was the alarming state of the court. The functioning of this court has long been hampered by several factors. The President of the Judicial Council was informed about these factors in detail. "Like probably all courts, we are troubled by the staff issue, which means a long-term lack of assistants as well as senior court officials and their insufficient financial remuneration. As far as judges are concerned - we have a planned 35 posts, but in real terms we have only 25 judges and one flying judge, and we have no determined vacancy for a judge. With such an understaffing, the basic activity for which we are here - namely decision-making - cannot be carried out effectively. In practice, this means that the parties do not get to their decision in real time. The number of files in the department of some judges is 400, in the main agendas the number of pending cases is 208 on average", said Zuzana Mot'ovská Dobošová, the President of the Bratislava III Municipal Court. The poor condition of the two court buildings is another factor. One of the buildings does not belong to the state and the rent for this building in 2024 is 565 thousand € without energy.
"The Recovery and Resilience plan was set up very badly and there is nothing that can be done about it now. The former government, led by former Minister of Justice, had set the plan up as 'the help for the courts', but in reality we can see that this is not the case. For example, it is impossible for the Bratislava III Municipal Court or the Bratislava IV Municipal Court to get separate buildings for their activities. They are limited by the way in which the funds from this plan are set up, and they must therefore be located in one common building in the future. With approximately 100 judges and 400 employees in both courts, we have to take into account the fact that there will be more than 150 to 200 litigants in the building every day. Another space is needed for the commercial register and the collection of deeds, which alone requires almost 1,000 square metres of space," said Marcela Kosová.
She also added that she would try to discuss these issues with the Minister of Justice. "If we want to improve the state of the Slovak judiciary, it is important to point out what bothers judges and presidents of individual courts and, above all, to find solutions, because this extremely important system is somehow not working for us," concluded the President of the Judicial Council, Marcela Kosová.
