Participants of the round table “Monitoring of court work in criminal proceedings, report and possible scope”‚ held in Belgrade on May 7, 2014, agreed to provide the following conclusions of the event:
CONCLUSIONS
1. To submit the report to the Ministry of Justice, the High Court Council and the State Prosecutorial Council, as institutions in charge of functioning of the Republic of Serbia judicial system;
2. To submit the report to professional associations of judges and prosecutors, as well as to bars with a view to introduce their members with its findings and recommendations;
3. To submit the report to organizations of civil society that follow situation in the area of judiciary;
4. To enhance and improve systems of professional advancement and discipline responsibility with a view to provide guaranties of competence of judges and prosecutors referred to professional knowledge and moral features;
5. To enhance methodology of collecting statistical data in courts and prosecution offices as well as their keeping;
6. It is being suggested to the Ministry of Justice, the High Court Council and the State Prosecutorial Council to seriously consider and provide implementation of recommendations included in the report “Monitoring of court work in criminal proceedings”. These are as follows:
• To provide guarantee for competence of judges, related to their professional knowledge and moral features;
• To regularly control quality of work of judges and prosecutors, through insight into their documents, with a view to control whether they meet conditions of knowledge and ethics, taken into consideration at the time of their election, and stipulated by the law on judges and the law on prosecutors;
• To provide essential respect of existing laws, regardless of subsequent possible amendments directed at harmonization with European standards;
• To harmonize case law in relation to type and duration of the sentence for the same criminal offences where there are similar mitigating and aggravating circumstances;
• To establish measures for more efficient and shorter duration of the court proceedings;
• To implement consistently and without exceptions international standards related to equality of parties in the proceedings in case of weaker protection of the rights of the accused in national legislation;
• To provide all necessary databases and other auxiliary resources (publications, forms…), taking care about their inter-compatibility, in order to enable that information from one database make references, if needed, to data in another.
The round table is part of the project “Striving for Better Judicial Reform Results” and it is funded by the European Union Delegation in the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Serbia Government Office for cooperation with civil society.
Download complete document:
Monitoring of court work in criminal proceedings, report and possible scope, Conclusions
