The President of the Judicial Council of the Slovak Republic has had discussions with Presidents of the Courts

Immediately after the election of the current President of the Judicial Council of the Slovak Republic, Marcela Kosová, announced her intention to communicate as much as possible not only with the presidents of the courts, but also with the judges of Slovakia. Less than two months after her election, she held a series of meetings with all presidents of district, municipal, regional and administrative courts at the official seat of the Judicial Council of the Slovak Republic. The discussions resulted in a list of the most pressing problems of the Slovak judiciary. "I heard from many court presidents, across the whole of Slovakia, about the problems related to the new court map. It has not brought the declared results and has not achieved its goal - to bring the judiciary closer to the citizens, quite the opposite. Court proceedings are being prolonged, and the workplaces of the individual courts are also proving problematic. The low financial remuneration of senior court officials, assistants and administrative staff, and the understaffed administrative judiciary are persistent problems. Unfortunately, there have been many of these suggestions, so we have to continue working with them," said Marcela Kosová, President of the Judicial Council of the Slovak Republic.

The implementation of the new legislation brought with it a new court structure as of 1st June last year. Three first instance administrative courts were established to deal with administrative cases. They have the status of regional courts and, together with the Supreme Administrative Court of the Slovak Republic, where the administration of justice began on 1st January 2022, they form the system of administrative courts. In the first wave of inspiring discussions, the main representatives of this type of justice were not absent. The President of the Administrative Court in Bratislava and the Vice-Presidents of the Administrative Courts in Banská Bystrica and Košice visited the official seat of the Judicial Council. "At the beginning of our activity, the most problematic was the staffing, which was deeply undersized - at that time we had only 18 judges out of 44 judges. Even the first work schedule was based on only seven judges. This situation is now improving, but it is not ideal, because we are still short of 11 judges," explains the current situation at the Bratislava Administrative Court its president, Jeannette Hajdinová. All the observations and shortcomings that were expressed in the individual meetings can be translated into suggestions for legislative changes. Every problem has an anchor in a law or a piece of legislation. In this respect, the President of the Judicial Council is planning cooperation between the Judicial Council and the largest professional organisation, the Association of Judges of Slovakia. "They have a lot of knowledge from their members. They comprise almost half of the judges in Slovakia. In this way, we will send a signal to the Ministry of Justice that what we are proposing to change is not an invention of one or two people from the green table, but it is a real problem and we will point it out from several perspectives," says the President of the Judicial Council.

The President of the Judicial Council will conclude her meetings with the court presidents on 11th July, when she will meet with the President of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic and the President of the Supreme Administrative Court of the Slovak Republic. The comments made during the discussion with them will also be incorporated in the summary of all the submissions. Marcela Kosová will subsequently visit Slovak judges in the autumn of this year directly at their courts.