The Justice Ministry is preparing an action plan to reduce the backlog of court cases and amend the State Judicial Council Act to provide for disciplinary action against judges who allow cases to be time-barred.

Dealing with the backlog of cases remains the top priority, and the Ministry aims to close all cases older than seven years before the end of this year. It also seeks to deal with all cases that might be time-barred and to keep the information on time-bar dates up to date.

Despite the coronavirus epidemic and the earthquakes, last year Croatian courts dealt with more cases (1,196,780) than they received (1,178,265). Courts in Zagreb, which deal with about 50% of all court cases in the country, reduced the backlog by about 3.5%.

The Ministry is also addressing anomalies in the Criminal Code to prevent procrastination of cases and possible abuse, as well as amendments to the Civil Procedure Code, legislation relating to commercial law, including the Bankruptcy Act, and the Debt Enforcement Act.

The Ministry plans to amend the State Judicial Council Act to provide for disciplinary action against judges for inaction when cases awarded to them are time-barred, as well as increase inspections of judges’ declarations of assets.