The obligation of courts and judges is to adjudicate within a reasonable time, said Supreme Court President Valentina Pavličić, stating that the courts have begun to monitor cases from their formation to their final conclusion.
Pavličić told the MINA agency after a conference organized by the OSCE Mission to Montenegro in Podgorica today, as part of the OSCE Regional Trial Monitoring Project in the Fight against Organized Crime and Corruption in the Western Balkans.
Speaking about the public report on trial monitoring in the Western Balkans, which provides recommendations on how to improve the judiciary's response to cases of organized crime and corruption, she said that the report is a good tool for the Montenegrin judicial system to review all the problems it faces.
"The report contains a series of recommendations and some guidelines that are based on the standardization of certain legal and procedural issues that Montenegrin judges and courts are facing during this period," said Pavličić.
She emphasized that since the beginning of her mandate, she has begun working on implementing the recommendations from the OSCE report.
"In the past two months, we have already set criteria according to which it is necessary for court instances to behave by following all these recommendations, and in that regard, we will very soon have some answers or court epilogues in a certain categorization of cases," said Pavličić.
As she stated, one of the most important recommendations from the public report of the OSCE project, which they have begun to implement, is case monitoring.
"We started following the case from the moment it entered the court until its final conclusion," said Pavličić.
She emphasized that, above all, it is the obligation of Montenegrin courts and judges to try cases within a reasonable time and to deliver legal decisions for all indictments pending before the courts.
"I will leave it to the public to judge how much and in what time the first results will be seen in that part," added Pavličić and appealed to the public to give the judges the opportunity to show whether they are truly expert bearers of their callings.
She stated that the first recommendation that was implemented and immediately put into practice was the so-called communication strategy of the judicial branch of government and the action plan that accompanies that strategy.
Pavličić said that they have taken a series of steps to make the public aware of the obligations and duties of the court in a proceeding.
As she said, they have also begun to implement the recommendation regarding increasing the visibility of cases and trials in the field of organized crime and high-level corruption, because it is witnessed every day that there are dozens of scheduled court proceedings in the High Court in Podgorica.
Pavličić said that the recommendation from the OSCE report was also implemented, according to which the Judicial Council, at the end of last year and in February this year, elected nine new judges of the High Court in Podgorica, with the aim of improving personnel capacity.
"We have elected nine new judges, whom the President of the High Court will probably assign to work in the Specialized Department, in order to improve that personnel capacity," added Pavličić.
She pointed out that they also helped the High Court in terms of space capacity, so the courtroom of the Appellate and Supreme Courts was given to the judges of the Specialized Department for use.
Pavličić said that in cases that are in the public's focus, and that the Podgorica High Court has been working on for a long time, care will be taken to ensure that procedural assumptions, or norms that regulate the cost-effectiveness of trials, are respected.
As she said, as part of the recommendations, they have also begun working on amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code and working group sessions will be held in the coming days.
"We received a response from the European Commission and the Ministry of Justice needs to do its part regarding legislative changes," emphasized Pavličić.
The OSCE Mission to Montenegro today, within the framework of the OSCE Regional Trial Monitoring Project in the Fight against Organized Crime and Corruption in the Western Balkans, organized a discussion forum that brought together key representatives of the judiciary and other relevant stakeholders.
Following the publication of a public report in June last year, which provides recommendations on how the judiciary's response to cases of organized crime and corruption can be improved, forum participants discussed concrete steps for their implementation.
The recommendations for Montenegro represent a detailed framework for progress that supports ongoing reforms.
The report provides guidance with actionable and evidence-based steps designed to support Montenegrin institutions, with an emphasis on those who prosecute and adjudicate organized crime and corruption cases, in creating a justice system that effectively responds to organized crime and corruption.
In Montenegro, within the project, monitoring is currently being carried out for 61 cases, of which 35 are corruption cases and 26 are organized crime cases.
The regional trial monitoring project, in addition to Montenegro, is being implemented in five other jurisdictions in the Western Balkans, through OSCE field operations in Tirana, Pristina, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Skopje.
The project uses an adapted methodology from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and is funded by the European Commission through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA II).
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